Engaged, Enraged
by Jezzabelle
Summary: Severus Snape never expected to fall for Raphaela Vialle. She's quite possibly the most annoying girl he's ever been stuck with, but now that they're engaged, things should change, right? ...Right?
1. Juicy Sweet

Hi! For those of you that enjoyed Internal, Infernal, this is the sequel. But don't worry about it if you haven't read it, I'm trying to make this work as a stand-alone piece. But for more background on Raphaela and what's happened so far between her and Severus, just check out the first one.

Enjoy! (I hope)

**Chapter One: Juicy Sweet**

He wasn't perfect, but he was perfect to me. Okay, that was cheesy. What I mean is, all the things that you could hate about someone are the things you love, just because it's him. Like, I loved that he had to take five minutes of mental preparation before he could tell me he loved me. And I loved that he always woke up exactly at six, even if sometimes I wanted to stab him in the neck for waking me. I loved to watch him snap and shout at a first-year, probably making them cry, and not just because it meant I could tell him off. I just… I just loved him, everything about him, from his weird hair (that he point-blank refused to let me do anything with, even though I could make it look _so_ adorable) all the way down to his boring shoes.

"We've had this conversation before, Raphaela."

Okay. So it was six in the morning and I was awake. But to be fair, I'd had seven cups of coffee the previous day and it _wasn't my fault_ that I couldn't get to sleep. But I had the feeling that that wasn't what Severus was talking about, lying in his weirdly rigid sleeping pose with still-closed eyes. I had the feeling that it was because I'd happened to be looking at him when I'd gone off on my tangent, and he always seemed to know when I was watching him. It was kind of eerie, actually.

"I was _not_ watching you sleep," I said defensively. He smiled slightly and opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling. He had such pretty eyes, when they weren't full of intense rage. "I was just glancing at you, then I started thinking about… well, it doesn't matter what I was thinking about. The point is that I didn't do it on _purpose_."

"I'm sure you didn't," he said, sounding completely unconvinced. "You do know that it's incredibly creepy, though?"

"Well, maybe you're just so wonderful that I can't help but be entranced," I said, hoping blatant flattery could get him off the topic. I really _hadn't_ meant to stare. At any rate, it seemed my flattery had worked. He didn't respond positively, though I hadn't expected him to. He did exactly what I'd expected, which was turning bright red and looking incredibly uncomfortable.

"Er… yes. Well, be that as it… well… I have a lot of things to do." He pushed away his blankets and stood up, still looking uncomfortable.

"That won't work on me anymore," I said, laughing. "I know you don't have anything to do, and neither do I. Now I've been awake for about twenty-four hours, and I'm _bored_, because you insisted on spending the last eight of those hours asleep, instead of having fun. What do you have to say for yourself?"

He'd lost his uncomfortable look and instead looked mildly exasperated as he stared at me. "Sweet Merlin's beard, Raphaela, you have the hormones of a teenager."

Okay, so now it was my turn to turn red and be embarrassed. "I didn't actually mean it like _that_, Severus. Though it's lovely that that was your first thought." Ha! I'd made him get all embarrassed and red again. The torch was passed.

"Oh. Well then. I suppose it's time to… get ready then. Classes will begin soon." He started to move to the bathroom, but I quickly kicked off the blankets and ran forwards, jumping on his back and wrapping my arms around his shoulders.

"I don't think so," I said, giggling slightly. "Not now that you've put the idea in my head."

"The idea for what?" he asked, before twitching slightly. "Oh! Well, then. In that case, I suppose I have nobody to blame but myself." His tone was aloof, but I could see that he was smiling. I had a good feeling about this day. It was a good feeling that extended all the way through breakfast, the first couple of classes, and didn't even dissipate at lunch, when the only thing on offer was steak and kidney pie and some gross-looking casserole that I didn't feel up to touching. I just had to content myself with trying to drink my body weight in pumpkin juice. I wondered vaguely how much I'd have to drink before I threw up when I heard a voice from the right side of me, a side I admittedly hadn't paid much attention to in my time at Hogwarts. How could I have, when I had Severus on my left? At any rate, it was speaking to me now.

"Why are you drinking so much pumpkin juice?" It was the voice of tiny Professor Flitwick, and he looked at once amused and mildly concerned. "Have you been afflicted with the Hex of Unending Parch?" Hmm. No, I didn't think I had. Or had I? I might've been. Then again, why would anyone want to curse me? I was lovely. No, I was pretty sure I hadn't been hexed.

"I don't think I've been cursed, no," I said cheerfully, refilling my goblet to near-overflowing. "I just want to see how much I can drink before I throw up."

"A worthy cause," came two separate voices. One was the laughing voice of Flitwick, the other was a dry, sarcastic voice from my left. Bloody Severus, always belittling my fun-times. Just because _he_ could tolerate eating weird casserole and organ pie. I laughed at their synchrony for a moment before turning back to my pumpkin juice, drinking it all in one go and earning peculiar looks from the members of staff. Well, they just didn't have my vision. I longed for a world where… well, maybe my juice-drinking efforts didn't have a definite purpose. But I really had nothing better to do, and if I drank enough of it, I'd probably get so many vitamins that I'd never get the flu again. Oh, who's that knocking at my door? Is it _the complete and utter awesome police, here to arrest me for my complete and utter awesomeness?_ I think it might be.

"So, Severus," came McGonagall's voice from two seats down. She had some pie on her plate but it was untouched. She was probably as impressed at the food as I was. I considered challenging her to a juice-drinking competition, but had to put it out of my mind when she began to speak once more. "How is Raphaela doing under your tutelage? It's been half the school year and I hadn't even thought to check up on it."

I began refilling my goblet, but then paused. These silly goblets only held so much juice, and there was so much readily available in the huge jug that I was holding. It would be so much more convenient to cut out the middleman. This in mind, I began to drink straight from the jug, wondering if I could drink it all in one go.

"Well, as you can see, I haven't managed to teach her the basics of dignity," I heard Severus replying, in a tone that seemed both abrasive and amused. "Raphaela, put that down. People are staring." I shook my head slightly, still drinking from the jug. I heard a small bump and the sound of Severus sighing, and I could just imagine him, elbows on the table, his face in his hands in exasperation. Finally, I had to breathe, so I put the now near-empty jug back on the table and grinned. Severus was posed exactly as I'd imagined. He could be so predictable sometimes.

"Minerva!" I cried, pointing at McGonagall. "Juice drinking competition! Starting… NOW!"

She didn't move. She just stared at me like I'd gone mental. What was the sugar content in this juice anyway? Must have been pretty high, I was feeling happy as a pig in poop. Severus turned from the table and looked at me, then snorted with laughter. "Raphaela, you've got pumpkin juice all over your face."

Super.


	2. Very Strange

**Chapter Two: Very Strange**

So maybe drinking four pints of pumpkin juice in the space of about ten minutes hadn't been the best idea. Along with managing to get another pint on my face and my white t-shirt, staining them both orange. Yeuch.

"Er… there's still time until the next class, right?" I asked, wiping my mouth with a napkin and trying to look dignified in all my orange-ness. "I really need to change my shirt." Severus consulted his pocket-watch before nodding, looking supremely amused at my appearance. Excuse me, but who even owns pocket-watches anymore? They were strictly for the very elderly, the very fancy, or the very trying-so-hard-to-be-fashionable. As far as I knew, Severus wasn't any of these things. I couldn't imagine him caring an ounce about fashion (the thought of him in tight pants and a beret made me laugh and also swoon a little), he wasn't ridiculously fancy, and he was only thirteen years older than me. Actually, that seemed like a really long time now that I'd thought about it. I hadn't considered it much before, but I supposed that it was a bit odd. Actually, the mere fact that I was an ex-student of his made the whole thing seem suddenly creepy and weird.

"Do you think this is creepy and weird?" I asked, trying vainly to soak up some of the juice from my top with my napkin. However, a single napkin can only hold so much fluid, and it was already under strain from the juice which had decided to throw itself at my face. I surreptitiously stole Severus' napkin while he was trying to figure out what I was talking about, and he didn't notice. Score.

"What?" he finally said.

"Us," I said, feeling a bit trite. I despised the referral of relationships as 'us'. I also despised the word 'relationship'. Needless to say, talking about one had proven very difficult in the past. "Because, I was thinking just now, and I kind of _was_ your student, which makes it kind of weird, and also there's the fact that you were halfway through being a student here when I was still in nappies."

He sighed, staring at me as though I had deeply and personally wronged him. "Think, Raphaela. What did we agree you would never do?"

"Um…" I thought. I thought _hard_. I was pretty forgetful most of the time, and he damn well knew it. He was only making me think to try and torture me. "Oh! We agreed I'd stop leaving underpants on the floor. I appreciate your dedication to tidiness, but I don't see how that's relevant in this situation."

"Guess again," he said, narrowing his eyes at me. "I'm not going to spell this out for you." Damn! People spelling things out for me was usually the only way I cottoned on to something. "You need to learn to use your mind to remember things other than filthy sailor's songs."

"Oh come on, that was one time, I was drunk, and I wanted you to know that I knew all the words," I said, folding my arms. "I don't know why you think that reciting all seventeen verses plus chorus and bridges isn't impressive. It's damned impressive, especially for someone in that state of inebriation. And I still don't remember what we agreed upon."

"Think."

"Okay. I'm thinking. Thinky, thinky, thinky."

"Think quietly."

"Oh!" I cried. "I remember! We agreed that I would never, ever, _ever_ try to make you say something which would imply affection without a five-minute warning space."

"Exactly," he said, looking pleased with me. It made me feel kind of nice. It made me want to use my mind to remember things he said more often, so that I could get this approval more. It was a filthy psychological trick, and I wasn't going to fall for it. "However, I would hazard a guess that the required five minutes since you asked me have elapsed." He lowered his voice and looked around, as though trying to catch out any eavesdroppers. "Raphaela, I concede that you and I are not particularly conventional. I probably would consider it odd, were it not for the fact that thinking about you causes any rational thought I may have to dissipate."

I sat there, stunned (in a nice way) by his small burst of sweetness. "Oh," I finally said, fighting the urge to giggle like a schoolgirl.

"People as… erm… excellent as you don't come along every day," he said, looking very uncomfortable. "I don't think that over-thinking the precise politics of what you and I have is a very good idea. I wouldn't want to… lose someone as… er… as special as you."

"That's quite possibly the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me in my entire life," I said, still stunned. He frowned and turned back to the table, drinking a large amount of pumpkin juice.

"I quite agree, Severus, I didn't think you had it in you," came an amused voice from behind him. It was McGonagall, looking as surprised as I felt. His head snapped around to face her, and I could just picture the horrified expression on his face.

"You will speak of this to no-one," he said, his voice authoritative but with a tinge of anxiety. McGonagall simply waved a hand nonchalantly and laughed.

"Your lack of acidity frightens and disturbs me," I said. Severus being sweet was so out of character for him I was actually beginning to wonder if it was someone else in a mask. "Quick, say something horrible so I know it's still you in there."

"You're incompetent."

"Super! Thanks." I noticed the students in the Hall beginning to leave for classes, and I stood up quickly. "No time for changing, I'll just have to put a sweater on, or something," I said, ruffling Severus' hair. He brushed my hand away like a particularly annoying fly and glared at me. I had violated the rule of 'Do Not Touch My Hair', but it was okay because he seemed a bit distracted. "Are you coming?"

"Actually, I have to speak with Minerva. I'll meet you in the dungeons shortly." He stood up and moved towards McGonagall, speaking quietly so that I couldn't hear. Darn him and his ability to talk in varying pitches. It was the bane of my existence.

It took me a very short time to get down to the dungeon. In fact, the sixth-years hadn't arrived for their classes yet by the time I got in there, so I peeled off my shirt and used the non-juicy parts of it to make an attempt to dry the beverage off my skin. Luckily, I got most of it off, and reached behind me for the knit jumper I'd left down there before lunch began. I was just trying to discern the back from the front when I heard voices behind me and I jumped, turning around to see who it was. Thankfully, it wasn't students. It was Severus and McGonagall, and they were staring at me as though I'd just eaten a fork. This was, incidentally, what my stomach felt like too. Severus was first to break the horrible, stretching silence.

"I leave you alone for two minutes and _this_ is what happens?" he uttered, but he was looking more amused than cross. I glared at him.

"I was just about to put something on," I said, pouting childishly. I waved the sweater around to prove it, then turned to McGonagall. "Good afternoon, Minerva. To what do I owe this unexpected arrival?"

She looked just as amused as Severus, though she did look very concerned as well. Perhaps she feared for my mental health. "I am taking this opportunity to gain a first-hand account of your aptitude for teaching," she said, not moving from the doorway. "If I may offer advice, the eschewing of clothing is generally frowned upon in this occupation."

Right. Now she thought I was completely incompetent. There goes my chance of ever being a teacher. Though, I guess I would never have made a good one anyway. I'd probably be fired for swearing, or being half-naked in class, or something trivial like that. Bloody rules. They never did anyone any good. "Well, I suppose you'll see how awesome I am, then." Okay, so I couldn't think of anything better to say. So hex me.

"Yes, we can see your attributes very well," Severus snapped impatiently. "But put them away before the students arrive, or we'll be hearing from some _very_ annoyed parents." I giggled, and even McGonagall cracked a smile. I shot a mock-glare towards Severus quickly before pulling on my jumper, and not a moment too soon, for groups of sixth-years began to mill into the dungeon. They sat down, whispers erupting amongst them about McGonagall's presence.

"Silence," Severus said, sweeping forwards to stand in front of them and act imposing. His whole scary potions master act was a lot more fun when I knew what he was _really_ like. Sure, his true personality wasn't too far off, but it was still a lot sweeter. To me, anyway. "Today you will be brewing the basic blood replenishing potion, which I highly doubt any of you will successfully create. Instructions are on the board; ingredients are in the store cupboard. Begin." He swept back behind his desk and sat down, looking quite at a loss now that he had finished being intimidating.

"Oh, poor thing, you've got nobody to frighten anymore," I said condescendingly, putting on a mock-pitying face. He actually bared his teeth and snarled at me, which was extremely frightening and disturbing. So much so, in fact, that I decided against baiting him further and instead moved around the room to see if anyone needed help with their potions. One boy had misread the instructions as saying seven grams of powdered root of asphodel instead of one gram, but luckily I caught his mistake before he'd put it in the cauldron and rectified it. I told him I'd personally make sure that Severus improved his horrific writing and returned to my post by the front desk.

"You know," he said, reading over a pile of essays. "When I find I've nobody left to frighten, I just imagine your head impaled on a spike, and then I don't feel so bad."

"That's so sweet of you," I said in a monotone, eyebrows raised. Okay, so he could have been a little abrasive at times. But I think I preferred this normal Severus to the ridiculously sweet one that had made an appearance at breakfast.

"It's quite vivid," he continued, not taking his eyes off the essays. "Your tongue is hanging out and you have an X where your eye should be. Oh, did I mention you only have one eye? Half your head was eaten by a passing wolverine."

"Please never say anything to me again, ever," I said, now feeling completely disturbed. There was a fine line between 'normal behaviour for him' and 'oh Merlin so creepy I want to run away', and he'd crossed it. Well, not so much crossed it as set fire to it and then urinated on the ashes.

"Now try and tell me I've got nobody left to frighten," he said, looking up at me with one eyebrow raised. Oh, damn. He'd got me. He'd got me _good_. Damn him!


	3. Reprise

**Chapter Three: Reprise**

I actually did end up forgetting Minerva was there. I sort of got so into helping the students out with their potions that I forgot about everything else. What can I say, I've always had a soft spot for medical potions. I probably could have continued studying them and made a career as a healer, but teaching was what I'd really wanted to do. Too bad it had a few less zeros at the end of the paycheck, though. I guess if there was any lesson I'd want Minerva to watch me do, it was this one. I didn't know why she was doing it though. Surely she had classes of her own to teach?

"Well, Vialle," she said, as I was rinsing the potions residue down the sink at the end of the class, "I'm quite impressed with what you've managed to learn in the short time you've been here."

I beamed at her. "Well, teaching's what I love. You know me." She smiled back before turning to leave the room, nodding at Severus as she went. I noticed he had an odd look on his face. It was half pensive, half melancholy, and half pleased, and _yes I know that makes three halves._ I walked over, leaning onto the desk and looking at him, a smile on my face. "What are the happy haps?"

"The… what on earth are you talking about?" he said, looking completely bewildered. I simply smiled wider and poked him in the forehead before straightening up and wandering behind him, putting my arms around his shoulders.

"You were looking quite thoughtful, wrapped up in your head like that," I said, squeezing him tightly. "What's going on?"

"Just thinking about something you said, when you were in the hospital wing. Remember that head injury you got?"

"Yes, the one I got because of you."

"_What_? Don't for one second think you can blame your clumsiness on _me_, Raphaela Vialle," he said, looking outraged. I smiled even wider.

"I was startled into hitting my head because McGonagall was knocking at my door early in the morning, which she did because you told her to. Therefore, ipso facto, you gave me a horrendous head injury." He lost his expression of outrage and replaced it with one of extreme exasperation, which looked quite adorable on him.

"I don't agree with your logic, but I must ask that you not go around telling people that I gave you a concussion," he said. I nodded reluctantly, knowing that I was losing my Fun Christmas Party Story. Oh well, I was sure there'd be more fun stories eventually. "Now, as I was saying before you accused me of domestic abuse, I've been thinking for a while about what you said in the Hospital Wing."

"What, that you're so fabulous that I want to spend every moment of every day with you?" He made a peculiar noise and stood up, walking over towards the sink.

"Never refer to me as… as _that_, ever again."

"What, fabulous?"

"Vialle! You are the most annoying, self-assured, idiotic imbecile that I have ever met," he said, looking quite angry. My smile faded a little, but I knew deep down that he'd get over his rage in a matter of moments. "However," he said, and I smiled broadly again, "I find you surprisingly tolerable."

"That's sweet."

"Shutup, I'm trying to say… I'm going to ask you something."

Oh! Exciting! Please let it be 'would you like me to give you a cupcake'. That would be fabulous. I'd even settle for 'can I please buy you a pretty dress'. Or even 'I'd like you to do my hair every day for the rest of my natural life'.

"Does it involve cupcakes?" I asked warily. He looked, if possible, even more exasperated. "Dresses? Hair?"

"Do you remember in the Hospital Wing," he said, as if I'd not said anything, "When you were telling me why you didn't marry… _him_?"

Pfft, he still couldn't face up to saying Johnny's name. Bloody Severus. "Yeah, vaguely, I was kind of concussed at the time though."

"And you said that he wasn't extraordinary?"

"And that you were, yes," I said, wondering when the cupcakes would enter into this. I was hungry for cuppy, damnit. "When do I get my cupcake?"

He ignored my comment again. "I am aware that this… this has not been going on for very long," he said awkwardly. I wished, for the thousandth time, that he would just get over his horrific awkwardness when talking about us. It made everything get drawn-out about six times longer than it needed to be. "However, you… are… extraordinary, Raphaela. And I have never been as sure of anything as I am of this."

"Less talky, more cuppy," I said, folding my arms. "I'm going to get very angry if you don't actually have a cupcake for me."

"Marry me."

He'd blurted it out like a gun firing a bullet, so much so that I could almost feel the impact of the words hitting me. I stood there for a moment, completely shell-shocked and at a loss for what to say. It was my second proposal in the space of a couple of months, and I had to wonder what was wrong with all the guys in the world if they'd suddenly decided that I was suitable for rest-of-life stuff. I was mad, everyone knew that. I'd probably end up cutting them up into little pieces, eating them, and pooping it into a Magimix. Okay, that was a bit of an exaggeration. But I was extremely unsuitable for wifely things, at any rate.

"So…" I began, watching Severus seem to have mini-writhes of agony in front of me, looking like he'd kill his own grandmother to make me reply sooner. "There aren't any cupcakes, then?"

"Impossible!" he cried out, moving away from the sink and opening the store cupboard, arbitrarily shifting jars and straightening boxes. "You are impossible."

"Well, then I suppose we're well suited to each other," I said, pouting with folded arms. "But for Merlin's sake, why do people keep bloody well asking me to marry them? Is there something wrong with you?"

"I should hope not," he said icily from somewhere inside the store cupboard. "Are you going to give me an answer, or are you going to send me into conniptions about it for the rest of our natural born lives?"

Well, bloody hell. He was serious then. Even though I'd been faced with this question once before, this seemed different somehow. I was feeling less awkward and embarrassed, for one. I didn't know if that was because I couldn't actually see Severus at the moment, as he seemed to be burying himself alive in potions ingredients, or whether proposals just get easier. For a fleeting moment, I considered just running away, just sneaking over to the door while Severus' back was turned and finding a place to hide where nobody would be able to find me. As tempting as that was, though, I couldn't do that to him. But I supposed I should really be thinking about the question at hand. It was easy, actually, once I'd thought about it for half a second.

"Well, we're not getting any younger," I said with a tremendous grin on my face. I heard a smash from inside the store cupboard and Severus emerged, looking quite livid. "Actually, I'm a spring chicken, so to speak. You're the one who isn't getting any younger." He looked, if possible, even angrier.

"Are you accepting, then?" he asked, storming over to where I stood by the desk. I shrugged and looked at my fingernails, acting bored.

"Yeah, alright. Haven't got much else on," I said, my eyes flicking up to gage his reaction. He looked as though he was about to have a brain aneurism from anger, but then his face relaxed and his eyes looked quite elated. He barely cracked a smile though, the old grump.

"Well. Excellent. I suppose you'd best have this, then." He pulled out a small box from his robes and slammed it down on the table, moving away to lean on the desk, facing away from me. It contained a gorgeous ring, a huge sapphire in the centre surrounded by some sparkling black things that I couldn't identify. "I know you like that… that stupid colour."

"Sweet as always, Severus," I muttered, moving forwards to throw my arms around him. He looked down at me with a mixture of fondness and annoyance on his face, before patting my arm awkwardly.

Lovely.


	4. Cupcakes and the Tale of Nagini’s Bite

**Chapter Four: Cupcakes and the Tale of Nagini's Bite**

When I'd gotten over the shock of _actually being engaged_, _sweet Merlin's beard_, I could concentrate on what was really important: that Severus, while he had asked me to marry him and it was very sweet and all, had not given me any cupcakes. This could not be allowed to continue. It was blatant false advertising, is what it was. He shouldn't have gotten my hopes up so viciously, just to knock them down again like a house of cards. I mean, sure, _we were engaged, holy hell_, but I'd been kind of expecting cupcakes. A ring was nice, but it wasn't nearly as delicious. For this reason, I had to take action. So I struck first. Literally. With a blackboard duster, upside his head.

When the dust cleared and I could see properly again, it was not a pretty sight. Severus was covered in blotchy white chalk marks, and he looked so furious I could actually believe that he'd take the ring and use it to throttle me in the most painful way possible. Thankfully, I didn't think he had the power to pull it off. Then again, who knew?

"Is there any point in asking why you did that?" he said through clenched teeth. "Or is it just a taste of what I've got to look forward to?"

"You're the only one that's getting a taste of _anything_ around here, and that's the problem," I said, before realizing that it was stupid, and too cryptic for him to figure out without my help. Luckily, I could rescue him from this dire situation. "I mean, cupcakes. Give me some."

He ignored me. That meanie. Well, not so much 'ignored' as 'stared confusedly'. After seeming to decide that it wasn't worth asking me what I was going on about (I figured I'd see a lot of that in the years to come) he moved towards the door and unlocked it. Students came pouring in, taking their seats as Severus waved his wand to make the instructions appear on the blackboard. He turned around and sat back at his desk, looking as emotionless as a mannequin. I felt a strange rush of air sweep past me, and the next moment I almost fainted in surprise, for a large cupcake had appeared in my hand. It was iced in dark blue and looked ridiculously delicious. I heard some disbelieving noises coming from nearby and turned to see what the students were so excited about. There was a cupcake on every desk. Severus was staring determinedly down at his desk, writing something on bits of parchment and pressing so heavily that he was tearing through to the wood underneath. I smiled a little smile to myself and looked back to the students, who were regarding the cupcakes with a mixture of disbelief and terror, some even prodding them with their wands to find out if they were poisoned. I felt my smile broaden and I took a big bite of my cupcake. Oh, _delicious_.

That night, I lay awake for hours in bed, my mind buzzing around in circles with thoughts of getting married. Dresses, bouquets and venues flashed through my head, and it was all I could do not to run around the room squealing in girlish excitement. But I couldn't, because Severus was asleep next to me and he did not appreciate being woken up by my yelling things. Unfortunately, I had found this out the hard way, quite a few times. Most of them were drunken, singing times, but there were a couple where I just _had_ to shout about something in the middle of the night. I didn't expect him to understand. But I wished he was awake. I felt like talking to him, about anything at all. Like, what are sausages made of? Or, why do they call it a quill? I'd even settle for asking him how his day was, even though I'd been with him all day and I knew _exactly_ how his day was. The view of the ceiling became boring to me so I turned over, lying on my side and looking at his pale shoulders bathed in moonlight. It might've just been the moonlight, but he looked almost translucent in this dark. I reached out a hand and poked him in the head with it, trying to ascertain that he _wasn't_ in fact a ghost, and fortunately he was still solid. His breathing shifted slightly and I wondered whether or not I had woken him, but then a tendril of hair shifted slightly and I saw two scars on his neck. Scars that looked like puncture marks.

"Oi," I said, poking him again. He made a sleepy noise and shrugged, as if to shoo me away. "Are you a vampire?" This got his attention. He turned around and stared at me, looking bleary-eyed but still very bewildered. After I offered no further explanation, he flopped down onto his pillows, closing one eye and reaching a hand out to rest it on the side of my head.

"What insane theory is formulating in that tiny brain of yours, Raphaela?" he asked wearily, muffled slightly by the pillow. "And can it wait until morning?"

"It just looks like you were bitten by something, on your neck," I said, and watched his only visible eye widen as he snapped to attention. "Were you?"

He remained lying down, but withdrew the hand he'd had on my head and pressed it against his face. I wished he hadn't, it'd been kind of nice having it there. "Three years ago," he said. "Three years. That's how long it's been since the Dark Lord was vanquished."

"Yeah," I said, trying not to sound sarcastic. Of course I knew when Voldemort was killed. It was in all the papers, everyone was partying like it was 1999. Which it wasn't, not for another two years. St. Mungo's had to do about fifty times as many stomach pumps from all the partying people were doing. It was pretty crazy-fun. "What does that have to do with you?"

"Everything," he said, still with a hand on his face. "He tried to kill me in the final battle."

"Shit." Okay, so it might not have been the right thing to say. But I couldn't think of anything else. Nobody had lived once Voldemort wanted them dead, especially if he's killing them himself. Except that Potter kid, but he was a special case. "So what happened?"

"He set his snake on me. It bit me. I almost bled to death and entered a kind of hypnotic unconsciousness that is unique to that particular snake's venom." Well, holy crap. You learn something new every day. Like the fact that your fiancé had survived an attack from Voldemort unscathed. Well, define unscathed. Severus was pretty scathed, as far as being scathed went. He was the scathinator. Wait, what? "Potter… the boy… he found me after the battle was over. He tells me that he felt a pulse. They pumped me full of every antivenom they had. It took me a while to recover properly, though."

"But… haven't other people died from the snake?" I was thoroughly confused, and unless Severus was just lying to me (and why would he do that? Unless he really was a vampire and it was in his best interests to keep it a secret) he was some kind of superhuman.

"Yes," he admitted, taking his hand from his face and touching my hair with it, furrowing his eyebrows. "But none of them had experimented with the Dark Arts as much as I had during school and afterwards. I'd managed to build up a certain amount of tolerance. Still, if Potter had not found me as quickly as he had…"

"No," I said, not wanting to think about it. Life without Severus wasn't worth imagining. "Thank Merlin he got to you in time. Sucks to be Voldemort, though, doesn't it? He's pretty rusty at the whole 'killing people' thing."

"Oh, now that's just morbid," he said, but he was laughing. "You have the most peculiar sense of humour."

"Hmm. Do you think I should dye my hair?"

"No," he said, relaxing on the pillows and closing his eyes again. "No, Raph… you… are just perfect the way you are…"

His breathing changed once more and I knew he'd fallen asleep again, and I smiled to myself. My Severus was a _superhuman snake-surviving scathinator_, and he thought I was _perfect_. Everything was wonderful.


	5. Gone

**Chapter Five: Gone**

I woke up to bright sunlight beaming directly into my eye sockets. How was this possible, in a dungeon room? I didn't know, and I hadn't even questioned it until now. All the windows all around suddenly seemed weird, out of place. I slid out of bed lazily and moved towards them, looking out. The scenery wasn't like anything I'd ever seen in Hogwarts, and when I tried to open a window to get some fresh air in, I realised their secret – magical windows, designed to simulate outside weather when a real window was unavailable. The curtains were open, which was kind of unusual, but I didn't dwell on it. What was really unusual was that Severus hadn't woken me up at six. I checked the clock on the wall, it was nine-thirty. It was a good thing it was a Saturday, or I'd have been in trouble. In fact, Severus wasn't even in bed anymore. I couldn't hear the shower running, or any noise at all to indicate where he could have been. He was probably having breakfast in the Great Hall, but why not wake me? It seemed weird, rude even, that he'd go without me. It was then that I noticed the note on the desk, written in his straight, tight handwriting.

_Raphaela,_

_Have you nearly been up? Quite taken with you, make certain you're sure of marriage. Order some breakfast, find the owl out in bathroom._

_Severus_

That… well. What the hell was that? That's just… that didn't sound at all like him. What was he playing at, using those weird words? It seemed like he'd written it while drunk, or at least incredibly tired. I'd almost think someone else had written it, were it not for the fact that I could recognize his handwriting a mile away. Well, I supposed that if he wanted to say strange things, it was his prerogative. I moved towards the bedside table to find something to wear, but then I saw the blood.

Two identical drops of glistening red liquid were lying on the bedside table on Severus' side, looking ominous. That coupled with the weird note was all I needed to see. I threw on some jeans and a shirt, shoved the note into my pocket, and ran out of the door. I barely noticed all the stairs and corridors flying past me, but I was out of breath and sweating profusely by the time I got to the staff room entrance. My chest felt tight, constricted, in a way that didn't have much to do with the fact I'd just run a mile. I was worried about Severus. His note didn't say anything about where he'd gone, or what he was doing. I hoped with all my being that I'd walk into the staff room and see him sitting in one of the chairs, (maybe the one I'd been in when we met that day at the start of term) or drinking coffee by a bench. Unfortunately it was not to be, but the person I'd wanted to see second-most was there. McGonagall was marking papers with a mug of tea on the table near her, and she looked up when she heard the door opening. Seeing me, red-faced and sweaty, was enough to make her put down what she was doing and move towards me, looking concerned.

"Merlin, Raphaela, have you run all the way here?" I nodded, fishing the note out of my pants and passing it to her.

"I found that when I woke up, just then. Severus is gone, and I saw blood on the bedside table. I'm worried." I fidgeted with the bottom of my top nervously, tugging at the fabric. McGonagall raised her eyebrows as she read the note.

"I see. What's this about marriage?"

"Oh… he asked me to marry him yesterday. I said that I would." McGonagall's face lit up momentarily as she nodded in a congratulatory sort of way, before falling downcast once more.

"I'm afraid this is written in the most basic of Order codes. I presume he hadn't much time to write this to you, and was tired, though under the watch of some particularly stupid captors."

"Captors? Codes? What does it say, Minerva?" I put my hands to my head and raked my fingers through, feeling somewhat angry at her. She was supposed to reassure me. She was supposed to tell me that I was overreacting, that she'd seen Severus only minutes beforehand and he was fine. That he'd just popped out for some more milk for the staffroom, and that he'd be back any moment. But she looked extremely worried.

"It's a code where every second and third words are omitted. Without these words, it reads: 'Have been taken, make sure Order find out.'."

"Order?"

"The Order of the Phoenix, Raphaela. It was the old resistance against Voldemort. I'm not sure why he wanted the Order to know, unless… oh! Oh, no, it can't be… I hope it isn't… but I can't think of who else…"

"What are you talking about?" I cried, feeling my anger more intensely now. "What do you think? What's happening to him?"

"It's… it's a group of anti-Voldemort fanatics," McGonagall said, looking grave. "Nobody knows who exactly they are or why they're doing what they're doing, but they kidnap any old Death Eaters who evaded punishment by the Ministry by way of information selling or bribery. I'm not sure they'd believe Severus turned good in the end… if it's them that's got him, we haven't got much time. They usually kill them fairly quickly, but if we're lucky they'll just be torturing him for now."

"Are… are you saying that he's going to die?" I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes, and I had the tremendous urge to fall to the ground and not get up again, ever. McGonagall shook her head resolutely.

"Not if we can help it. I'll try to rally up some of the old Order. We'll track him down, Raphaela. I promise you. You'll get him back."

"If he dies, I'll kill him, the stupid bastard," I said angrily. "Thinks he can just run off and get kidnapped… well, if he comes back I'll make sure he gets what's coming to him…"

"_When_ he comes back, Raphaela. It's going to be okay. Here," she said, holding out a box of tissues. I wondered why for a moment, before noticing that my cheeks were wet with tears. I took a tissue and dried my face quickly, turning away so that McGonagall wouldn't see me crying anymore. She moved around me, stopping at the staffroom door and looking back. "I should go. I'll send some patronuses out, and if I can be spared I'll come back… make sure you're okay…"

"No," I said loudly. "I'm fine, I'll be fine, I'll be okay by myself. Just… find him?"

A look of concern flitted across McGonagall's face, but she nodded and left so fast that I didn't have time to say goodbye. What if Severus died? I'd never had a chance to say goodbye to him, or to let him know exactly how amazing he was. What had been the last thing I'd said to him? Some stupid question about my hair, for Merlin's sake. I felt like a world-class idiot, like I should've told him that I loved him every time I let him out of my sight. Just to make sure he knew. But I had to compose myself, because there was a chance he might still be alive. There was always a chance. He'd survived the snakebite, he was tough. He could survive torture, though it killed me to think of him being hurt. But Avada Kedavra? He didn't stand a chance if they decided to kill him, and from what McGonagall said, there might only be seconds to save him, if he was even still alive at all.

It was then that I realized how absurd I looked, standing alone in the middle of the staffroom with mouth agape, clutching the front of my shirt, shaking with silent sobs. My breathing was rapid and I felt light-headed, barely noticing the tears falling into the floor in front of me. I didn't want to be standing up anymore, my legs just didn't feel up to it. I moved towards my old seat, the navy vinyl thing that I'd been sitting on when I'd first arrived to the school, when Severus had given me that first glare. I lay on my side on the row of chairs and rested my head on my hands, bending my legs slightly to try and relax myself. I traced the pattern of the table in front of me with my eyes, wondering who had created it, how long it had taken, if they had used magic or a chisel. I repeated the word _table _over and over in my head, so many times that it was beginning to lose its meaning, and then I realized I was whispering it aloud when I heard a noise from the doorway.

"Severus?" I gasped, looking over, but it was McGonagall who stood there instead, with that same look of concern on her face. She walked over to me and sat down next to where I lay my head, resting a hand on the side of my head as Severus had done the previous night. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend to myself that I was back there, lying in complete euphoria with the utter love of my life. It was no use, though, I couldn't take myself back in time, not when my mind was spinning in terror. "What's happening?" I asked, keeping my eyes closed.

"I received a reply immediately from Kingsley," she said softly and cautiously, like I was a bomb that might explode. "He says –"

"The minister?" I asked, dumbfounded. I could readily admit to not knowing anything at all about the Order of the Phoenix, including that the Minister for Magic used to be in it. It was entirely believable, though, as he was famously opposed to dark magic and any anti-muggle sentiment.

"Yes," Minerva replied, waiting a moment before continuing. "He says that the Department of Magical Law Enforcement have been working on tracking this… _association_ down for a while, and by a stroke of incredible luck, he thinks they've just about worked out their location. I told him the… situation, and he's fast-tracked the raid date. A team of the most capable Aurors have been put together to raid their headquarters and try to save anyone who's still alive."

"That's great, Minerva," I said, though it sounded hollow coming out of my mouth. The way she'd said it, it seemed like there was little chance of finding anything more than a few vigilantes and a pile of corpses, Severus topping it off. Oh, bloody hell. The thought of his lifeless body tossed aside with the kind of scum that associated with Voldemort made me collapse into fresh sobs, and I shook on the seats, holding my hands against my face. Minerva removed her hand from my head but remained sitting next to me, not saying a word. It was nice not to be alone, though.

* * *

Hey guys, just a little note reminding you to review. As I've said before, I don't mind personally how many reviews I get, but the fact is that a story with more reviews will get more hits, and the ultimate goal of me writing is to get as many people as possible reading my stories. Thanks :)


	6. Expectations

**Chapter Six: Expectations**

The hours that passed that morning were the longest I'd experienced in my life. A few times I tried to start something, to take my mind off things at McGonagall's suggestion, but I couldn't concentrate on anything. My mind kept going back to Severus, and what I'd do if he were dead. Nothing, I supposed. My life had just been ordinary, aimless before I met him. Now… I was going to get _married_, for Merlin's sake. _This_ was my life. He was my life. There wouldn't be anything left for me if he wasn't with me. It was a horrifically depressing thought, but it was all I could think of. The worst part was that with every second that ticked by, it was another second that made it more likely that Severus was dead. The Ministry couldn't risk staying in contact with the team charged with raiding the vigilantes' headquarters, so I was left without any news at all. I didn't know if Severus was alive, or dead, or whether the Aurors had even found the place yet. It was killing me. Lunch passed and I didn't bother getting up from the staff room to go to eat anything, there didn't really seem to be a point. My stomach didn't appreciate the idea of food and I certainly didn't need to sit in a room full of happy, carefree people. It would just have reminded me of Severus and what had happened to him.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was still lying on my side on the staff room chairs. McGonagall brought me a tray of sandwiches and some pumpkin juice, but I couldn't eat. She looked for a moment as if she was going to try and convince me to eat something, but thought better of it and simply sat down next to me once more, not saying a word.

"I can't imagine what you must be feeling," she said finally, after several minutes of silence. I'd lain on my own in the staff room for so long that I'd almost forgotten what sound was like. It gave me a shock but I remained flopped on the chairs, docile. "But you must occupy yourself with something. It can't be any worse than lying there, thinking the worst."

"I'm not thinking the worst, I'm thinking of how stupid my hope for the best is." For it was true, I was an idiot to think that he could survive. According to McGonagall, the people that she thinks took him were known for killing quickly. Even if he wasn't dead, he was tortured beyond belief, and I'd heard stories about that. About what could happen to someone if they were tortured for long enough. It scared me so much it didn't bear thinking about.

"It's not stupid. Sometimes, hope is all we have, and we must keep it, lest we lose ourselves," she said. "It can be a comfort, a shining beacon in an otherwise dark tunnel."

"I just want Severus back," I said softly, collapsing into silent sobs. "This is… this is bad. This sucks." Painfully aware of how feeble my words were, I could barely form sentences, let alone sentences that could express what I was feeling.

"Minerva?" came a deep voice from across the room. I saw her head turn and I sat up, momentarily awestruck at the imposing sight of the Minister for Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt. It was quite peculiar that he'd deigned to come to Hogwarts for whatever reason, though I supposed that he and McGonagall might've become friends when they were in the Order together. He turned to look at me, clearly surprised. I'd been hidden by the backs of the chairs, and my tearful face popping up must have been a shock to him. "And you must be Raphaela. I'm very sorry for what's happening, but I have some news regarding the situation."

"Is he okay? Did you find him? Where is he?" I said quickly, not caring whether or not it was intelligible. It was, apparently, for Kingsley walked deliberately over and sat on a chair perpendicular to the row on which I was half-sitting, half-lying. He rested his elbows on his knees, looking up at me.

"There is good news and there is bad news. The good news is that the raid was successful. The perpetrators have been arrested and Severus was found alive."

Oh… oh, joy. I could feel the warm blood flowing back into my body, as if the time I'd spent worrying had somehow frozen me up. I heard myself giggling, raised my hands to my face and touched my mouth with them, feeling like everything had returned to blissful normality. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It was… amazing. I could barely find words to describe the feeling that was taking me over, but it was like a picture of a kitten was multiplied with birthdays and Christmases combined, creating some weird kind of super-joy. It was just lovely.

"But the bad news…" he trailed off, looking somewhat deflated. He was looking as concerned as McGonagall had earlier, like my reaction to his news had disappointed him somewhat. I wondered vaguely if I had done the wrong thing somehow. "They were extremely displeased with what they'd heard about him, the things he'd done while undercover as a spy."

"He was a spy? That's… that seems familiar," I said. I'd probably heard it somewhere, but just forgotten it. At any rate, the thought of him being an undercover double agent was a pretty cool one. But then I realized that Kingsley was trying to give me bad news, and I forced myself to pay attention. "Where is he? Can I see him?"

"He's suffered greatly in his ordeal," he said. "He is currently resting at St. Mungo's. I don't think he should be taking any visitors."

"Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to deliver a resounding 'fuck you', Minister," I said without thinking. His eyes widened and he looked surprised, and McGonagall made an unidentifiable noise next to me. I turned to her and saw that she looked utterly scandalized. "Sorry, Minerva. Minister," I said, turning back to Kingsley, "I don't care what you say. He… I want to see him. I thought he was going to _die_. We… we were going to get married…" I felt my voice crack and I stopped talking quickly, figuring that McGonagall had seen me cry enough times today. She probably didn't need to see it again.

After a long argument, consisting of me being Angry, Kingsley being Infuriatingly Reasonable, and McGonagall Making Sure I Didn't Fly At His Throat (though I wanted to), Kingsley had agreed to escort me to St. Mungo's, so that I could get the Healers' opinions on what was to be done. I sat in the visitor's lounge of the fourth floor, flicking through an old Witch Weekly magazine but not really taking any of it in. McGonagall hadn't come with me; she'd stayed at Hogwarts to fix the apparently lax security around the dungeons. Kingsley was busy finding a Healer familiar with Severus' case who could see me, and I was left, once again, with nothing to do but wait. Fortunately I didn't have to wait as long this time, for Kingsley returned within half an hour with a kind-looking witch in lime-green Healer's robes.

"I want to see him," I said immediately, throwing the magazine down on the coffee table and standing up. I knew from altercations with Severus that I wasn't very imposing, but I tried anyway. I drew myself up to my fullest height and tried to furrow my brow in that grumpy way that he did. Unfortunately, I couldn't sustain it and was left looking very peculiar, with the Healer looking at me like I'd gone mad.

"Yes, the Minister's filled me in on your request, but I don't think that's a good idea at this time. He's sustained some very severe injuries, he needs rest." She _did_ look apologetic, but damn it, I didn't care. I wanted to see Severus, if only to make sure he was alive at all.

"I'm not going to do anything. I just want to see him," I said, feeling my eyes begin to tingle. The Healer looked even more concerned, and after biting her lip and looking hesitant, nodded at me. I followed her around several corners and down a few corridors, before we reached a private ward.

"I'm not supposed to let anybody see him. Just don't do anything to overstimulate him, okay?"

"Overstimulate?" I asked, a grin spreading across my face. "What do you think I'm going to do, bring him a circus?" And with that, and the confused look on the Healer's face, I entered the room. Severus looked terrible. He was lying in the hospital bed with his eyes closed, looking even paler than usual, with dark patches around his eyes. The pale green hospital gown looked incredibly odd on him, when I'd only ever seen him in black. None of it mattered, though, because he was alive, and we could be together again. I sat in a visitor's chair and peered at him eagerly. He was still sleeping. I knew better than to try and wake him, but still, I wanted him to wake up, so that I could tell him that I loved him, that I'd been worried, that I was going to _kill_ him for freaking me out like that. I saw a finger twitch on his left hand, and I fought the urge to take hold of it. No overstimulating.

"Raph… Raphaela…" the words coming out of his mouth barely registered in my mind, what was mind-blowing was the fact that he was _talking_, he was _talking to me_, when only an hour ago I'd been convinced that I'd never see him again. He still had his eyes closed, though, so I wasn't sure if he was awake or asleep. A pained expression flitted across his face before he opened his eyes and turned to look at me.

"Hi," I said, smiling at him. "I'm not supposed to overstimulate you. This is weird, isn't it? You in a hospital bed, me all worried, it's a bit of a role-reversal, don't you think?"

He looked at me, brow furrowed. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly and hoarse, but the words were so painfully clear that they felt like knives stabbing me all over. "Who are you?"


	7. The Horror

**Chapter Seven: The Horror**

No.

No, it wasn't true. It was some horrible, terrible joke. A very feeble, cruel joke. Who could find this funny?

"Excuse me?" I asked, feeling my voice crack and my eyes tingle once more. "Don't do that, Severus. Don't fucking fuck with me like that, you fuck." I was angry. Why was he pretending he didn't know who I was? He knew me. He _loved_ me. "You just said my name two fucking seconds ago. You _know_ who I am."

"I do not," he said softly, looking angry. "I don't know what you think I've said or done, but I think you should leave before I call a Healer." When I didn't move from my seat, he pressed the red button on the side of his bed, causing the witch in the lime-green robes who had escorted me to Severus' ward to burst into the room, looking livid.

"What did I tell you about overstimulating him? I _told_ you, he needs _rest_. You're not helping anyone by being here. Leave, now." She looked like she meant business. After a tearful glare towards Severus, I made to leave the room.

"I'd like to see Dumbledore, too, if I may," I heard him say, causing the witch to sputter and try vainly to formulate a response that wouldn't send Severus into brain aneurisms. I would have found it funny, were I not so incredibly angry. I choked out a few sobbing cries as I leant against the wall outside his ward, before realizing what he'd said. If Dumbledore was the man he'd want to see in hospital, Dumbledore might be able to shed some light onto this horrific situation. The only problem was, he'd been dead for four years. As I made my way tearfully back to Hogwarts, I pondered. Dumbledore would be the one to go to, Dumbledore had always known everything about everything when I'd been a student. He'd know exactly what was wrong with Severus and how I could fix it. But that did still leave the quite large problem of him being _dead_. How exactly does one talk to the dead, without consulting some kind of spooky Divination stuff? I'd never heard of anyone communicating with the dead reliably, unless you counted talking to those creepy paintings of people.

Of course! Dumbledore was so bloody important and influential, he'd be sure to have portraits up all over the world. The only problem was how to locate one. I had about six billion of his chocolate frog cards, but I'd never heard one of them talk. I had to assume that the charm on them only extended as far as mobility, whereas proper paintings got the whole walking-talking package. Surely there'd be a portrait of Dumbledore somewhere in the castle? Then again, he was a pretty modest sort of a guy. He might not want pictures of himself up all over the place. Oh, if only there was some kind of room where portraits of _all_ the old Headmasters resided, so that one could consult them on matters of grave importance.

Oh, right.

I'd been summoned to Dumbledore's office enough times in my day ("Miss Vialle, Professor Trelawney says that you threw up in her teapot", "I'm sorry Professor, I've got a hangover that feels like Voldemort's ghost is hiding out in my head") to be very familiar with the old Headmasters that adorned the walls of his office. I was so pleased with myself and my brainpower that I didn't even notice that I was flying straight towards a tower of the castle. There was no time to turn or brake, but luckily the impact was cushioned by my smashing through a glass window. Smooth.

In a stroke of weirdly good luck (but I considered it my due after the luck I'd just had), I found myself lying on a bed of broken glass _in the Headmaster's office_. Pretty good navigation for someone who had no idea where they were going. I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the pain and blood that had sprouted all over my body, and launched myself onto the desk to survey the portraits. I soon located the one I was after, of an old man with long white hair and beard, snoozing softly in an armchair.

"Oi! Dumbledore. I need to talk to you. It's about Severus," I shouted, on the off-chance that he actually _was_ asleep and not just pretending. He opened his eyes slowly and let out a large, fake yawn.

"What has he gone and done this time, Miss Vialle, that would require you to bypass the stairway and fly directly through the Headmaster's office window?" He looked so infuriatingly calm that I wanted to wipe that smug smile right off his face, but I kept my anger in check for the time being. Severus needed me to find a way to help him, and I wasn't going to let him down.

"He's been tortured, and now he doesn't know who I am." Saying it out loud was different to thinking it in my head. It made it more concrete, almost palpable.

"Should he?"

"Yes, he should!" I cried, wringing my hands above my head to stop myself punching things. "We're going to get married! We _were_ going to get married. I don't even know anymore."

"Well then, you're in quite a situation."

What was that? What the hell was that supposed to be? For Merlin's sake, the man I loved had some kind of freaky amnesia going on, and I go to Dumbledore for help, and this is what he gives me? "You're going to need to be a bit more helpful than that."

"What do you want me to tell you, Miss Vialle?" I didn't know if it was a rhetorical question, or whether he was genuinely offering his knowledge to me, but I wasn't going to pass it up.

"Why is he like this?"

"A ponderous question," Dumbledore said, looking thoughtful. "Do you know what made Severus such a good spy?"

"I don't know," I cried, putting my hands to my head. "I just want him back to normal, for Merlin's sake." Dumbledore looked empathetic for a moment before composing himself once more and steepling his hands in front of his chest.

"Think, Raphaela. How does a wizard stand up to Voldemort's powerful legilimency?"

"I don't know!" I repeated, louder still. "You can't! He's too powerful!"

"Severus could. How?"

"I don't know! I suppose… he closed his mind off or something…"

"Exactly," Dumbledore said, looking pleased with himself. Smarmy old git. "So Severus was exceptionally skilled at controlling his mind. At locking it up somewhere other than in his consciousness. Are you following me?"

"Not at all," I said, completely confused. "Are you saying his mind's somewhere else?"

"Sort of," he said, still smiling. "It's where it's always been, but unless I'm much mistaken, his mind has entered a sort of final self-defense mechanism. This is known to occur in exceptionally skilled occlumens, if they are subjected to enough physical or mental anguish. The mind closes itself off, so to speak. For protection, I'd assume. If I were you, I'd take the fact that he's forgotten who you are as the greatest of compliments."

"Why?!" I screeched, not caring who could hear.

"Simply, Raphaela, it shows that his memory of you is the one he wants to protect most – consciously or subconsciously."

"That's all well and good," I said, feeling as though it was anything but, "but how do I make him go back to normal?"

"That I cannot say," he said, and promptly fell asleep once more, snoring softly from his portrait.


	8. Enraged, not Engaged

**Chapter Eight: Enraged, not Engaged**

So Severus had some kind of mind-lock on him. Well, back to St. Mungo's. I may have been thrown out of his ward last time I was there, and he may have forgotten who I was, but Merlin's beard, I was going to see him. When I passed the Welcome Witch at the front desk she looked at me as though I was a patient, which was pretty strange. Then I remembered that I was covered in blood and broken glass with a dirty, tear-streaked face, and suddenly it didn't seem so strange. It was still annoying though. I got so many odd looks as I went up to the fourth floor, it was kind of ridiculous. And you could tell, in the elevator, people were trying to look at me but pretending not to. I wasn't _that_ messed up, was I?

My question was answered for me when I was walking towards Severus' ward and I caught sight of my reflection in the window of a darkened room. My clothes were torn and bits of broken glass were sticking out of my skin, not to mention the blood that was coating me. I could have stared, horror-struck, at my own reflection for hours, but I snapped myself out of it when I remembered that Severus needed me, and I couldn't let him down. Fortunately, the witch who'd thrown me out was nowhere to be seen, and so I slipped quietly into Severus' ward (hopefully) undetected.

If it weren't for the dark room, he'd have looked exactly the same as last time I'd seen him, sleeping peacefully, pale and gaunt, in the hospital's pale green patient's robes. It was kind of nice, to pretend for a moment that he hadn't forgotten who I was, that we were still going to get married. I sat down in the visitor's seat once more, resting my hand on the armrest and ignoring the pain that was shooting through me. Something should probably have been done about all that broken glass and the wounds, but it wasn't important. Severus was. And he was sleeping, I think. Either that or he was pretending to be asleep so that he could avoid a repeat of the swear-fest of that evening. I glanced at the clock next to his bed and saw that it was past midnight. Where had the time gone? Actually, it seemed like months ago that I'd woken up to an empty bed and an encoded note. And the worst part was, I had no idea how long it might take Severus to remember who I was.

He stirred, eyelids twitching. I kept silent. I didn't want to 'overstimulate' him, especially if it might make him worse. I simply leaned against the back of the chair, not enjoying the crunching noise the glass was making in my back. It might've been a combination of my long day, or my tremendous blood loss, but I was feeling quite exhausted and dozy. I kept my eyes on Severus for as long as I could, but finally I had to succumb to sleep. My eyelids drooped closed and I drifted off.

I was woken by a strangled cry of alarm coming from somewhere in front of me, and I snapped to attention, brandishing my wand in case somebody had come into Severus' ward to finish him off. However, it was just me and him in the room, and he was staring at _me_, looking bewildered and slightly terrified. Well, I _had_ seen my own reflection. I was a pretty scary sight, and that was in a brightly lit corridor. In a darkened ward, well, I probably looked like some kind of monster.

"It's okay, Severus, it's me," I said, before realizing he probably still had no idea who I was. "It's Raphaela. I look all freaky now because I smashed through a window, but that was only because I was thinking of you and –"

"Didn't I have you thrown out?" he said, his hand moving slowly towards the Healer call button. "Because I could probably have you arrested."

My eyes started misting up _yet again_, and I had to blink the tears away not only because I didn't want Severus to see me crying, but because the repetition was getting kind of annoying. I was the human hosepipe, and it had to stop. "Please don't call for the Healer, Severus," I said wearily. "I don't want anything from you. I just want to sit here for a while longer."

He glared at me for another moment, then rested back down against his pillows. "Ordinarily I wouldn't stand for this, Miss… Raphaela, did you say? But you seem somewhat familiar. Did we know each other in school?"

"Not when you were in school," I said, a slight smile creeping into my face. "But we did when I was in school." He looked confused, but didn't question it. "So what did that stupid-faced Healer tell you when you asked for Dumbledore earlier?"

"'Stupid-faced'?" he said, smirking. "You are a shining pinnacle of maturity. She said that he was unavailable… but he's gone, I know that now. I don't know what I must have been thinking before."

"So… you've been remembering things?" I said eagerly, leaning forwards. The glass stuck in me crunched painfully again, but once again I tried to ignore it. "Do you remember anything about me yet?"

"Should I?"

"Yeah," I said, feeling my brief moment of happiness deflate. "We were going to get married." I wondered how many times I'd said that phrase in the course of the day, but that thought seemed less important when contrasted with Severus' reaction.

"Excuse me? I don't think so." He looked affronted, almost offended, and I felt a stabbing pain well within me that had nothing to do with my window-related injuries. "No offence meant, Raphaela, but I doubt that you and I could ever get along."

"Yeah, you'd think so," I muttered sullenly. "But I've grown on you, like a god-damned fungus, and you _like_ it, damn it."

"You terrify me sometimes," he said, a slight smile on his face. "I think you're the oddest person I've encountered."

"I'll take that as a compliment," I said, still somewhat angry at his lack of remembrance. He had the courtesy to remember stinky old Dumbledore, but not me. Typical. "Haven't remembered me yet, have you?"

"Far be it from me to accuse someone I barely know of being a liar," he said, though it seemed like he was doing just that _and he knew it_, "but I have no idea who you are."

"Right," I said. "Well, I was thinking, when you were kidnapped and I spent all day crying because I didn't know whether you would live or die. I was remembering the last thing I said to you before you were taken. Do you remember what that was?"

"What do you think the answer to that is, Raphaela?" He was trying to appear nonchalant, but I could see that he looked uncomfortable. I didn't care, damn it. I was going to say what I had to say and he wasn't going to do a damn thing to stop me.

"I asked you whether or not I should dye my hair. See, it's been black for a long time. It's my natural colour, actually. But I realized that that was completely stupid of me."

"I don't follow."

"It was stupid, and I spent all day wishing that I'd told you what I feel, that I should tell you every day because I love you every day. I fucking love you, you stupid bastard, and if you'd died I don't know what I would have done with myself." I was working myself up to a right state of anger, and I didn't care.

"I'm sure… I'm sure you would have managed," he said, looking even more uncomfortable. A blood-covered, glass-encrusted, tear-stained Raphaela was probably a scary sight on its own, but paired with the angry look that was probably spreading across my face, I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd had a heart attack out of fear.

"And after I asked you if I should dye my hair, do you know what you said? You were just about to fall asleep, so don't worry, it's not something you'd _ever_ usually say to me. You said that I was perfect just as I was. Do you remember that?" He opened his mouth, but before he got a chance to say one word, I spoke over him. "Of course you don't. Now, Dumbledore's portrait said that I should feel _good_ that you've completely _fucking_ forgotten me, because it means that you're protecting your memory of me, but I don't give a flying grindylow what that sad old coot says. You are going to remember me this _second_, whether you like it or not." I finished my tirade, breathing heavily in and out. I still had a look to kill on my face and Severus looked very worried and mildly frightened, yet again. Slowly, my breath returned to normal. And I waited. And waited. Severus was looking at me like I was insane, which was familiar enough.

"Raphaela…" he said slowly. "I… I _really_ don't think that I'd ever consent to marrying you."

That was it. Severus wasn't going to remember me. Tears welled up in my eyes once more and this time I didn't do anything at all to stop them as I stood up from the now blood-soaked seat and walked over to him. I thrust my hand towards his face and he recoiled, as though he thought I was going to hit him, but relaxed once he realized I wasn't. He peered at my hand in the near-sunrise light and I glared at him, brows furrowed in my best imitation of one of his looks.

"Consent? _Consent?_ You got me this ring and you asked me to marry you," I said, pointing to my ring finger. "It might be too dark to see it now, but that's a sapphire. It's my favourite fucking colour, you… you twat-face. You got this for me because it's my favourite colour, and you knew that because you _loved_ me. Have the stupid thing back, I doubt I'll need it." I pulled the ring easily off my blood-slicked finger and slammed it down onto the table beside the hospital bed. Shooting a final glare in his direction, I stormed angrily out of the ward, and slammed the door shut behind me.


	9. Euphoric Triggers and the Return of…

**Chapter Nine: Euphoric Triggers and the Return of…**

After I finally stopped crying for the sixty billionth time, I made my way to the ground floor to get something done about my injuries. For Merlin's sake, I was covered in bits of broken glass, and it _hurt_. I joined the early-morning queue to see the Welcome Witch at the front desk, but luckily it was a short one. The clock on the wall said it was only half past six in the morning, and I wondered what could possibly befall people this early in the morning. Some of them were early visitors, but most of them were in need of medical attention. The man at the front of the line, currently talking to the irritable-looking Welcome Witch, had two triangles of toast where his ears should be. From what I could hear, his wife seemed to have taken a remark he'd made 'extremely out of context', and had hexed him to have toast-ears. Strange, I couldn't imagine a situation where an ancient wizard of yore would be sitting around, thinking 'what we really need, is a spell that will turn someone's ears into _toast_'. It just doesn't happen. A couple of women were standing directly in front of me, arguing in furious whispers about whose fault it was that their toenails were cursed off. After what seemed like an eternity spent bleeding to death in a queue, I made it to the front of the line.

"Could you direct me to the broom crash ward, please?" I asked, trying to sound as polite as possible. I knew from early mornings dealing with Severus that the tiniest thing could set someone off if they were already predisposed to rage. Argh. Stop thinking about Severus. I was going to get healed, then go back to the school, and try to figure out what to do with my life. Nothing to do with Severus whatsoever.

"Down the corridor, second on the right," she said, pointing to her left. I followed where she'd directed and found several large signs that would've shown me exactly where to go without me having to stand in that boring queue. Idiot. My wounds were really beginning to throb, and I wondered how on earth I'd managed to put up with them for as long as I had, especially going to sleep with them, as I had in Severus' ward. _Stop thinking about Severus_. By the time I got to the main entrance of the broomstick accident's section, I was almost passing out from the pain.

"Now, look at you," said a kindly-looking old Healer behind the nurses' station, moving around to take a look at my injuries. "When did this happen, and how? It looks like you've lost a lot of blood." He walked in circles around me, looking me up and down to gage the extent of the damage.

"I crashed through a window, maybe eleven, eleven-thirty last night?" I guessed, giving him an apologetic smile.

"Well, it's a simple enough case to treat, I can do it right here. We'll have the wounds fixed up good as new as soon as you can say 'dittany', young lady, but you've got to come in earlier in these situations," he said, shaking his head at me. "What on earth were you doing?"

"My fiancé was kidnapped and tortured, I've been trying to get him to remember who I am," I said wearily. The Healer's eyes widened and his mouth fell open in a comical 'O' shape, but he quickly composed himself and called for a nurse to fetch the dittany from the medicine store.

"Well, those things can happen. Have you set a date?" He seemed to be trying to keep me awake and alert, rather than being genuinely interested, but it was nice to talk to a stranger about it, someone who wouldn't necessarily judge me for what I feel.

"No," I said, feeling extremely deflated. "I couldn't get him to remember who I am. I called it off and gave him the ring back. I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now."

The Healer looked lost for words. It was probably for the best, he really wasn't helping me not think about Severus. Soon enough, though, the nurse came back with the dittany, and he smiled and clapped his hands together. He drew out his wand and pointed it at me, and I stepped back defensively. He laughed loudly, making me feel very, very silly.

"Well, don't point a wand at me without warning," I said, folding my arms. That was a bad idea, it forced the glass deeper into my arms and torso. I winced and relaxed once more, looking up at the Healer.

"I apologise," he said. "I forget that some people are concerned with wands pointed at them. I'm just going to get the glass out. _Accio visible glass_."

"That seems a bit specific," I observed, trying to ignore the bits of glass being wrenched out of my skin by magic. The Healer nodded sagely.

"If I'd summoned the glass indiscriminately, anything embedded in your back would have come through your body towards me. Very painful, possibly life-threatening, not necessary. Now, please turn around." I did so and he repeated the spell, and I felt quite a bit better now that there were no foreign objects in my wounds. He tapped the lid of the dittany bottle with his wand and it turned into a spray-top, which I realized was for the best. Trying to dab the solution onto every single cut would have taken hours. In a few short minutes I'd been sprayed all over, and the pain vanished. My clothes were still torn, but I had others at Hogwarts, and the rips weren't displaying anything too private, thank Merlin.

"So, is that it?" I asked, feeling quite nice, despite what had just happened between me and Severus. The Healer nodded and I gave him the thumbs-up before flouncing about the ward, feeling _extremely _pleasant. The glass must have been hurting me terribly because now that it was out, everything seemed okay.

"Oh my," the Healer said, looking at the dittany bottle. He turned to the nurse who had fetched it. "Where did you get this from?"

"It was the only bottle left," she said, shrugging. "The re-orders haven't come in yet."

"Excuse me? Miss?" he said to me, and I stopped my flouncing to look at him. "I'm afraid this dittany is past its best-before date… it still works, but it has some… side effects."

"Side effects?" I asked, grinning at him.

"Euphoria, basically," he said. "And in a few hours you may feel nauseous. It's nothing to worry about, but I think we should keep you in here for observation, at least until lunchtime."

"Excellent," I said, beginning to flounce again. "I haven't anything else to do today."

"Just keep within the hospital, please," he called after me, as I flounced out of the ward and towards a circular staircase. I ran up a few flights before getting tired and having to stop, so after that I flounced about whatever floor I'd ended up on. I'd guess two or three, if I had to, but I was feeling far too giggly to check. I just wanted to flounce. And flounce I did, past the wards with the people in their hospital beds, bypassing patients going for early-morning strolls, and I didn't pay the slightest bit of attention to any one of them. That was, until I saw _him_.

Severus going for a stroll. An early-morning stroll. So unlike him. He was walking with a Healer who looked like he'd just come out of medical school and looked relieved to be walking with a patient rather than cleaning up sick. He looked surprised to see me. Severus, not the Healer.

"Oh, good morning," I said, grinning at them both. "Strolling, are you?"

"Er… yes," replied Severus, looking at me in a bewildered sort of way. I looked down at his tightly clenched hand and saw a glimmer of blue in there, but before I could figure out what it was, he'd put his hands behind his back. "You look… healed."

"Yeah," I said, somehow fighting the urge to do cartwheels. "Actually the dittany they used was kind of old so I'm getting this weird euphoria as a side effect. Pretty awesome, yeah?"

"Quite," Severus said, though he looked like he thought it was anything but. I ran past him to the corridor, turning to decide which way to run next.

"Must flounce, catch you on the flipside!" I cried, zooming off. I ran through several wards before I tripped over something, going flying across the room to land in a heap on the ground. The impact had sent a shiver of pain through my body but I felt like my body was essentially unhurt, so I leapt up again, and saw the one person I'd expected to see least in this hospital. He was lying in a hospital bed, staring at me disbelievingly. His floppy hair was falling in his eyes, but it didn't detract from the air of general prettiness about him. "Johnny?!" I cried, leaping forwards to sit on the visitor's chair.

"Hey, Raph," Johnny said, half-smiling. "What are you doing here? What happened to your clothes?"

"I flew a broom through a window last night," I said happily. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know, the usual. My roomie accidentally poisoned me. It's okay though, he says he didn't mean to and the rent's good, so I'm going to stick with it." He smiled broadly at me and pushed himself up on the hospital bed, sitting on the pillows. "How have you been?"

"Oh, super," I said. "I got engaged, then he forgot who I was and I called it off. About an hour ago, actually. How about you? What's been going on with you?"

"Um… not much, actually. Just life, you know. Nothing as interesting as what you've been doing. So who is this guy you got engaged to? Anyone I know?" He seemed okay with me being engaged to another guy, which was strange, because he'd been so upset when I'd turned _his_ proposal down only a month or so ago.

"Actually, it's the guy from the school, the one you met a couple of times," I said. "Apparently I was totally in love with him and I didn't even realize it."

"Always the way it goes, right?" he said, and I laughed. Well, this was pleasant. No screaming matches, no wild accusations, no tears. _All_ ex-boyfriend encounters should be like this. "That Snape guy? That's pretty unexpected, Raph. I didn't think he was your type."

"_You_." A low, growling voice came from somewhere to my right, and I looked over to see Severus standing at the foot of Johnny's bed. He was still with the young Healer, who looked suddenly uncomfortable.

"Oh, hey," Johnny said, looking nervous. "I heard you lost your memory, tough break, man."

"Indeed," Severus replied, glaring. "You know, I never liked you." Oh, bloody hell. Now Severus was remembering _Johnny_ but not me? This was completely ridiculous. What did Johnny have that I didn't? Aside from the obvious. "You were never good enough for Raphaela."

"That's me!" I cried, leaping up. "You remember me!"

"I believe so," he said lightly, looking mildly amused. "I must say… I… well, that is to say… I must apologise for what you must have been feeling on my account. I will make every endeavour never to allow myself to fall victim to torturous, amnesia-inducing kidnappers again." He knelt down and opened his hand towards me; it held the blood-coated engagement ring I'd slammed onto his bedside table only an hour previous. Something warmed inside me with the knowledge that he'd been carrying it around with him, possibly trying to regain his memory of me. "Raphaela Vialle, I don't think I should have to ask this again, but will you marry me?"

"Of course I will, you stupid bastard," I said, throwing my arms around him so enthusiastically that he fell backwards to the ground. He stood up again extremely quickly, affecting a serious expression, and I held out my hand. He put the ring on me again and suddenly, in a wave of euphoria that had nothing to do with the ancient dittany, everything was right once more.


	10. Coercion

**Chapter Ten: Coercion**

I don't think I've ever slept more soundly in my life. After a quick once-over by a Healer who confirmed that Severus had made a miraculous full recovery and the effects of the dittany had worn off me, we went back to Hogwarts together. It was barely eight by the time we got back to school, and I was so exhausted from the crazy ordeal that I just collapsed onto the bed and barely had time to think before I drifted off to sleep. I hadn't meant to, something in the back of my mind kept telling me that I had to help teach a class in an hour, but I couldn't resist sleep's welcoming embrace. For once, my sleep was dreamless. I must have been more tired than I thought, because by the time I woke up, the sun was setting. After I cast my still-sleepy eyes over the room, I realized that I was alone.

"Severus?" I called, slightly more high-pitched than I'd intended. He emerged from the bathroom, looking slightly worried.

"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting on the bed next to me and putting a hand on the side of my head.

"Oh… I just woke up and you weren't here, and I overreacted. Sorry about that." I felt quite foolish, to tell the truth, like some squealing little girl who shrieks at the movement of a shadow. Severus was back with me now, and he _remembered_ me, and that was never going to change.

"Think nothing of it," he said, slightly distracted. "You know, when I saw… _him_… in that hospital bed, and I remembered you, I remembered what you said to me in that ward."

Oh, bloody hell. He remembered my little shouting tirade about being completely and utterly in love with him. I felt my embarrassment deepen, and I buried my face in the pillows to hide my flushed cheeks from him. "Yes, I called you a twat-face," I said, the sound muffled by pillows. "So what, want to fight about it?"

"Excuse me?"

"Nothing."

I turned my head and looked at him; he appeared to be completely bewildered. He was peering at me with a look of utmost confusion on his face, brows furrowed and mouth curved in a slight grimace. I smiled broadly at him; the look on his face was the funniest thing I'd seen in some time. And partly just because it was nice to see him. _Tell him that, you fool_.

"It's nice to see you," I said, launching my upper half forwards to spear-tackle his waist and hold it tightly. "Love you. Don't ever bloody well get kidnapped like that again, or you'll have me to answer to."

"Be that as it may," he said, as though he'd barely registered what I'd said. He patted the back of my head awkwardly with one hand, resting the other on my shoulder. "Barely a day passes before you give up on me, and call it off? I expected better from you, Raphaela."

"What?" I cried, releasing him and sitting up. I stared at him, making my eyes and mouth as wide as they could go without dislocating my jaw or my eyes drying out. How could he say something like that? Didn't he have any idea how much I loved him, how unbearably horrible it was to sit by his bed, not knowing whether or not he'd ever remember who I was? "What the hell? Why would you say that to me? It was awful like you don't even know!"

"Presumably," he said, staring at me with a nonchalant look on his face. "But I wonder, did you give up that quickly because it was so difficult for you, or was it because you were looking for a way out of this marriage?"

Sweet Merlin, he was sharp. He'd figured out plans that I hadn't even made yet. And yes, that was extremely blatant sarcasm. The stupid twat-face. "You're an idiot!" I cried, throwing my arms up. "You think I don't want this just as much as you do, or maybe more? Probably more? For Merlin's sake, if that's what this is about then I'll marry you right this stupid bloody second!"

He looked taken aback. "Really?" He asked. I nodded angrily at him.

"I love you, you stupid dumb-head. I'd… bloody hell. I'd do anything for you." His eyebrows rose significantly.

"Well, let's go then," he said, standing up from the bed and offering a hand to me.

"What?"

"I believe you said you'd get married 'right this stupid bloody second', Raphaela, or am I mistaken? I know my memory can be a little off sometimes." Oh, that stupid, plotting little _sneak!_ He'd tricked me! Tricked me into getting married right now! And to top it all off, he'd ended with a delicious little portion of _emotional blackmail_. Well, I wasn't going to stand for it. Actually… yes I was. I took his hand and let him lead me out of the room. When we were a suitable distance from the castle, he made to apparate.

"Wait, Severus," I said, pulling my hand back so he couldn't apparate with me. "I know why you're doing this, and I don't think it's necessary."

"Is that so?" he said, looking irritated. "I doubt you'd know a tea kettle if it hit you in the face."

"Well, that was uncalled for," I said, stepping back towards the castle. "There's really no need to be so rude to me, you know. I just know that you're… scared of what might happen if one of us dies. I'm scared too."

"I'm not_ scared_," he said, spitting out the last word contemptuously. "I'm just… I'm not scared."

"It's okay," I said, pulling him back towards the castle, towards the anti-disapparition wards. "I know it's terrifying if you don't know whether we'll live or die. But if we just blow through it now, we won't have anything special to remember it by."

"Well, I think that the fact that we're married will constitute proof that it happened," he muttered, but didn't argue any further.

"I want everything I do with you to be more amazing than it has any right to be." His eyebrows rose and he relented, letting me lead him back towards the castle. "Nothing will happen to us anytime soon. Hopefully we've gone through most of our bad luck in the past couple of days. We'll be fine. It isn't a now or never situation."

He sighed, walking back towards the castle with me. "I know. Deep down, I know that's true. But I can't shake the horrible feeling that's been hanging around since I was taken. I feel like something bad is going to happen to us, and I want to… never mind."

"You want to what?" I asked, prodding him. He shook his head, and I understood that he had something to say to me which would imply affection. I had to wait. "And the horrible feeling's probably just a side effect of the torture. Don't worry about it."

"You may be right," he said slowly, after a minute or so of walking in silence. "I was saying… I want to… make sure that you know exactly how much I… I love you. In the event that something _does_ happen and we are separated somehow, whether it is by kidnapping or death, I want you to remember that always."

"Sweet Merlin," I said, staring at him. "You're being unusually lovely. Maybe you should get abducted more often." He looked simultaneously horrified and amused, and I joined him in a laugh out on the cold Hogwarts grounds. I was still in my torn-up jeans and t-shirt, and I was freezing my extremities off, but it didn't seem to matter. Severus was with me, and he _loved_ me. What could possibly go wrong?


	11. Chills

**Chapter Eleven: Chills**

By the time we'd got back to the castle, it was night-time again. I received innumerable strange looks when I entered the Great Hall for dinner, before I realised that I hadn't changed out of my torn-up top and jeans. I made a mental note to do that directly after I'd finished dinner, but before I could freak out too much about all the creepy teenage-boy stares, I'd made it to the staff table. I sat down in my usual seat between Severus and Flitwick, and cast an eye over the food laid out on the table. It actually looked pretty good; there wasn't a non-fruity pie in sight. There were chicken legs and roasted potatoes, along with tureens of green beans and some delicious-looking cherry pies. I took some of the pie, painfully aware that I hadn't actually eaten anything in the past day and a half. It tasted like everything good in the world was going into my mouth, like I was eating Christmas. It tasted so amazingly awesome that I barely noticed anything going on around me, at least until Severus knocked over his goblet of pumpkin juice all over my lap. It was icy cold, and after the weather outside, it was an extremely unwelcome new development.

"Bloody hell, Severus!" I cried, taking a napkin and trying to soak up some of the liquid. "That's _cold!_"

"I apologise," he said, looking like he meant it. "I had an involuntary muscle spasm in reaction to what Minerva just said to me."

"Now, you can't possibly blame your clumsiness on me, Severus," came McGonagall's voice. I leant forward to better pay attention to what she was saying; she looked very amused. "I was simply so pleased at your survival and recovery that I had to ask the pressing question of the date of your upcoming nuptials. I apologise if that concept is too horrifying for you to contemplate, but I like to think you aren't letting your own shortcomings affect the life of sweet, young Raphaela."

I didn't know whether she was being sarcastic or whether she really thought I was sweet and young, but I decided not to dwell on it and instead pretend that it was the latter. Severus looked incredibly uncomfortable, not looking anyone in the eye but instead staring down at the potatoes on his plate, as though he wanted to murder each and every one of them in the most horrifyingly brutal way possible.

"That's nice of you, Minerva," I said to McGonagall, who smiled at me. "Unfortunately the date has not been set as yet. You're lucky I ruined Severus' plans, or we'd already be married and you wouldn't be able to come to the wedding."

"Excuse me?" McGonagall said salaciously. "Do my ears deceive me?"

"Severus wanted to get married just now," I said, relishing the awkwardness that had descended on Severus like a black cloud. He looked as though he wanted to murder _himself_ now, instead of the potatoes. Lucky things. "I convinced him otherwise."

"How favorable. I'd certainly be upset if I did not get a chance to witness your wedding," she said, smiling. "You really must get a date set, or he'll be wanting to get married every other day. If I know Severus, if there's one thing he loves, it's an honest expression of emotions." Now I was _sure_ McGonagall was being sarcastic. It didn't happen often, but when it did, it was well worth the wait. I cackled with laughter as Severus, sitting between us, looked horrified. I turned back to my plate and finished off my cherry pie, then with a yawn and a stretch, announced my plans to retire to bed. True, I'd been asleep only an hour previous, but I was still tired, for some reason. I felt like all I wanted to do was to crawl into a warm bed and curl up, never to emerge again. I ruffled Severus' hair, causing him to glare daggers at me like I'd peed in his cauldron, and staggered sleepily from the Great Hall.

By the time I got back to the dungeons, I was practically falling down on the floor with tiredness. I leant against the door for a moment and felt my eyelids droop closed, but luckily I regained my senses and got inside the room without passing out in the doorway. Eyes fully closed now, I peeled off the torn, dirty top and jeans I'd put on after receiving Severus' cryptic note, and tossing them aside, I collapsed onto the bed. All I wanted to do was to fall asleep in that position, but something told me that lying on top of the covers on a bed in the dungeons in only my underpants, spine twisted and face smooshed onto the sheets, was an extremely stupid thing to do. I flailed my arms about somewhat, trying to catch them on something that could be classified as the edge of a quilt, and managed it moments later, trying vainly to push it aside so I could slide underneath. It felt very nice, once I'd accomplished the feat of getting myself at least partway under the covers. I was now lying on my back, my right leg warm and cozy under the blankets, while my arms were spread out over the width of the bed and my left leg was draped over the side, toes barely touching the stone floor.

The opening of a door woke me so soon that I felt I'd barely slept a wink. That was probably accurate, since I was just waking up to Severus getting in from dinner. I kept my eyes closed, though. If he knew I was awake he might try to talk to me or something, and I just wanted to be asleep.

"Oh, now that's appealing," he muttered, with a small laugh in my direction. Well, I was tired, and if I wanted to have flailed extremities in the comfort of my own – I mean, Severus' own quarters, I was fully entitled to do so. Besides, he had no right to complain. He had a young, moderately attractive twenty-seven-year-old woman near-naked in his bed, and the mere fact that I may have been snoring had no bearing on that. He was damned lucky that I loved him as much as I did, even if I _was_ pretty sure I'd been drooling, mouth agape in my sleeping state. Okay, maybe I wasn't _that_ fantastic. But still. I was alright. Passable, at least. I felt a weight on the other side of the bed, shifting the angle of the mattress so that I moved slightly towards the middle of the bed. My right arm was still stretched out over Severus' pillows, while my left was strewn somewhere north of my head, but I didn't move them. I still didn't want Severus to know I was awake. I just wanted to be asleep, damn it. I felt an icy hand touch the side of my face, and resisted the urge to shiver at the chill that was making its way down my spine. It was a chill, I think, that had nothing to do with how cold he felt. It gave me butterflies in my stomach and I had to repress the urge to giggle.

"Mmf," I said, pretending I'd only just woken up. "You butt-face, you woke me." He retracted his hand rapidly and lay down next to me, on his back but with his head turned towards me.

"I apologise," he said. "I did not intend to cause a disturbance." I rolled onto my side and put my left arm over his chest, moving under the covers where it was warmer. He patted my shoulder in a way that seemed less awkward than usual, and kissed my forehead lightly. It was nice, to be with him. I was lucky that he loved me as much as he did.


	12. Clothes, or Lack Thereof

**Chapter Twelve: Clothes, or Lack Thereof**

"So, we're actually doing it? We're going to have this thing happen?"

Severus had woken me, as usual, at six a.m. on Tuesday morning. Instead of getting up immediately, as he usually would have done, he remained lying in bed with me, not saying a word other than the usual overly formal 'good morning' I always received. I'd woken up to find us in much the same position as we'd gone to sleep in – he was on his back, one arm about my shoulders, and I was on my side, arms around him and my head on his chest. This surprised me, because I was usually one to toss and turn in my sleep. Unless I'd kicked Severus multiple times during the night and he just hadn't said anything. The thought of that made me smile, that he would tolerate a midnight kicking for me. I truly had found an amazing man.

"That was the plan, Raphaela. I wasn't going to give you a ring and then turn around and say 'April Fools'." His voice was tinged with scathing, but from the way he was looking at me I knew he didn't mean a bit of it. "Though I must concede, I was not thinking of the actual… _planning_, or the event itself, when the thought occurred to me to proposition you in such a way."

"Oh, really?" I asked, noticing the pained look on his face. "And?"

"And…" he sighed loudly, glaring at me. "I was only thinking about the mere fact that I could… could not imagine my world without you in it, and I wanted to keep you by me for ever."

"Until time itself ceases to be," I said, smirking, and his glare increased.

"I'll thank you to cease your ridiculing, Raphaela," he said, sitting up. I followed suit, keeping the blankets around my waist to keep my legs warm.

"I wasn't making fun of you, I think it's sweet," I said, though it was kind of a lie. I had been making fun of him; I just didn't really want him to be angry with me. Who would? "You can be very sweet when you want to be, even if it seems so weird that I feel like I should wash your mouth out afterwards."

"I will endeavour to keep any residual sweetness under wraps then, in the interests of an untarnished mouth," he said, raising one eyebrow.

"Oh, I doubt that you could call _that_ untarnished," I replied, giggling slightly. He looked very uncomfortable for a moment before getting up out of the bed and walking towards the bathroom.

"School starts in two hours, Raphaela. I suggest you put something on your upper half, lest the entire school populace bear witness to _those_ all day."

I folded my arms across my chest and glared at him, letting out a faux-angry exhalation of breath. I smiled slightly despite my best attempts to appear grumpy. He sighed and shook his head before shutting the bathroom door behind him, and then the sound of water running invaded the bedroom. For a few moments, it was very hard to concentrate as my mind kept drifting back to – well, it doesn't matter what my mind was drifting back to. Suffice to say that for the half-hour I was alone in the bedroom, I did what any normal twenty-seven year old woman would do in that situation. I rolled myself up in a sheet and crawled around the floor like a worm, giggling madly the entire time. Okay, maybe not the _entire_ half-hour. The first ten minutes had been spent raiding the liquor cabinet, and the worm impressions _may_ have been a result of some slight inebriation. I ended up lying on my stomach, giggling into the suspiciously clean stone floor and whispering 'worm!' over and over again. I felt a foot turn me over onto my back, and I saw Severus standing over me, looking down at me with an expression of amused scorn on his face. Wearing only a towel, and with still wet hair, a droplet of water fell onto my nose, which made me giggle even harder. I mean, it dropped on my nose! That was funny. To me. I had managed to slightly wriggle out of the sheet, and it was now wrapped around my chest like a long, black gown. I raised my arms up in the air and waved them about over my head, still laughing at the absurdity of it all.

"Drunk?" he asked wearily, and I could do nothing but giggle harder and nod. He sat down on the edge of the bed and I followed suit, after several failed attempts at standing up.

"I was bored, you young scallywag," I said, clapping him on the shoulder. "You are always leaving me with nothing to do. Sometimes I think that all I have are my worm impressions."

"Mad," he said, shaking his head. "Absolutely mad. You do realize that when you become Potions Master, you will probably be fired for getting drunk before class?"

"That is probably what is going to happen, yes," I agreed. The sheet suddenly felt odd around me and so I pulled it off, staggering slightly as I raided the drawers for something to wear. I was hunched over so severely that my forehead was resting against the top of the bedside table where I kept my underwear, but it felt most comfortable in my slightly-pissed state. By the time I'd managed to find a matching set of underwear (I liked to match my underwear, so hex me) I was already bored of the whole getting dressed notion. Whining loudly, I still managed to find the motivation to change into the clean stuff before succumbing to laziness and flopping back on the bed. It was then that I realized Severus' exact wording. Leaping forwards in a spurt of energy, I hugged him tightly from behind and watched him flinch at the unexpected human contact. "You said _when_!"

"What are you talking about?" he asked, looking nonplussed. Oh, so he was going to play the I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about game. Possibly in conjunction with the look-at-Raphaela-like-she's-gone-mental game. I never liked those games, but Severus seemed to love them unconditionally, so I had to put up with them for his sake.

"You said, 'when you become Potions Master'," I said, giggling and hugging him even tighter. "Not 'if'. You think I can be a teacher! You think that, and _you know it!_"

"Of course I think that, you fool," he said, rolling his eyes. "Why else do you think I recommended Minerva's evaluation a few days ago?"

Well, now I just felt stupid for not figuring it out. _Thanks_, Severus, for making me feel dumb. That meanie. Oh, wait. He thought I was good enough to be Potions Master _now!_ That's so sweet of him! "You did?" I asked, in a weirdly high-pitched voice.

"Indeed," he said, standing up. Without him to lean against, I fell forwards and rolled off the bed, landing on my back on the stone floor. It was cold enough to freeze hell, but I was too giggly to care. He appeared concerned, though, reaching a hand down to help me up. Once I'd got my wits together and was in a standing position, he continued. "Though I doubt you actually made any attempt to learn anything in my classes, you appear to have a knack for the classroom. I thought it best to bring it to Minerva's attention so that her decision whether or not to keep you on is easier."

"Why, is she thinking of chucking me?" I asked, swaying slightly. I leant against the bedpost and shook my head, regretting my little early-morning drinking. Severus looked annoyed and folded his arms across his chest.

"No, you imbecile. Is it really so difficult for you to figure out simple concepts?" Well, that was just plain rude.

"Maybe it's just difficult for me to think clearly when I'm slightly tipsy and _you're_ in a towel," I said, pointing an accusatory finger at him. "This is not an ideal working environment, _Professor_." He looked down and saw that I was right. His look of annoyance was replaced with one of embarrassment and he hurriedly walked over to his closet to find robes. It had always seemed very cartoonish, the way that his closet held several versions of the same black robe, but hopefully someday I could try and convince him to actually put in some effort and wear _real_ clothes.

"You're no better," he said, tossing a set of robes onto the bed. "Traipsing about in your underwear like that."

"So what? I'm the one that's meant to be trying to think clearly here, and it's not like anybody else can see me."

"You really must get a lock for this door, Severus," came an amused-sounding voice from the doorway. McGonagall! Well. How very embarrassing.


	13. Announcements, Annoyances, and Axolotls

**Chapter Thirteen: Announcements, Annoyances, and Axolotls (Not Really) (But Really About the First Two)**

It wasn't _that_ embarrassing for me, but from the look on Severus' face, he'd popped several blood vessels in his brain. He grabbed the robe from the bed and walked into the bathroom as fast as he could while still retaining some semblance of dignity, making me laugh at his oddly stiff gait. McGonagall looked like she was trying not to laugh, but the moment the bathroom door shut on Severus' back she let out a small chortle before composing herself. In a manner of moments, Severus returned from the bathroom, fully dressed and with dry hair.

"I _do_ have a lock, Minerva," he said acidly, as though no time had elapsed since she'd asked. "I just may have been… a tad distracted when I entered last evening, and it slipped my mind."

"Yeah, distracted by boobies," I muttered, laughing at him. I hadn't really intended for either of them to hear, but I'd said it a bit louder than I thought, and Minerva snorted with laughter while Severus looked even more embarrassed and uncomfortable.

"Raphaela," he said sharply, "that is hardly appropriate conversation. Don't you have some clothes to be putting on?" I stuck my tongue out at him before walking over to the drawers again, pulling out some jeans and a shirt. After I'd put them on and found some socks, I turned back to McGonagall.

"What's up?" I asked, separating my socks. Severus walked forwards and leant against the bedpost, watching McGonagall to see what she would do next. It took a few moments for her to compose herself again after the surprise she'd received upon entering, but she managed it.

"I presume Severus has informed you of his plans?" she asked, and I rounded on Severus angrily. He really needed to stop not telling me things. Wait, was that a double negative? 'Stop' is a negative, right? Yeah, it was. He needed to start telling me things. But that didn't quite have the same ring to it. Anyway, he hadn't told me of any plans, and I was angry about it.

"Unless you mean his secret dream to manage a fairy floss stand at the local fair, no," I said, trying to keep a straight face. I didn't know why I was joking around when I was so annoyed with him, but I was doing it all the same. "Or maybe you mean his plans to actually tell me stuff in future."

"I was leading up to it," he said, trying to appear irritated at my irritation. He turned to McGonagall and fixed her with a steely glare. "I was just about to tell her slowly when you burst into my private quarters without so much as knocking."

"My mind must have been somewhere else," McGonagall replied, returning his glare. "As yours must have been when you neglected to inform Raphaela of what you were going to do." Severus was lost for words at this, and simply doubled his glare-power. Now, if glares could power broomsticks, he would have the market cornered. "Will you tell her, or shall I?"

"Somebody, just tell me!" I cried, feeling very impatient with the whole mess. There they were, having this secret no-Raphaela club meeting, _right in front of me_, and I was not going to stand for it. They were going to tell me what they were on about whether they liked it or not. "Or I'll kick both of you in the _face_."

They looked bewildered and slightly concerned, but Severus held a hand up to McGonagall and turned to me. "Do you remember last year, just after Christmas, when you were going to leave the school?" Well, of course I remembered that. _I _wasn't the one that had been having stupid memory problems. Actually, I should tell him that.

"_I_ wasn't the one having stupid memory problems," I said. Raphaela one, Severus zero. Score. He looked both exasperated and infuriated. Ooh, rhymey! A bit, anyway.

"After I had ascertained that you were not, in fact, leaving, I did some thinking of my own," he said. I wished he would just get to the bit where he tells me what he's going to do. All this build-up was annoying me.

"I get whiny when I'm impatient," I warned, folding my arms huffily. "You'd better get to the good bit, or I'll have to write a strongly worded letter to the proprietor of this establishment." He looked as bewildered as I'd ever seen him, which made me smile a little. Only smiling on the inside though, if I'd smiled on the outside he would have known that I wasn't really angry with him. And my anger was (hopefully) making him get to the end of this long, boring story faster.

"I was thinking about why I took this job in the first place. And you see, it was only because of Dumbledore, and the Order, and the Dark Lord. None of those things hold any sway over me anymore." Boring. I didn't care about that, but I was far too polite to say anything. Unlike Severus, who would've told me six times already to shutup, because he didn't give a flying doxy. Curse my unending politeness! It was the bane of my life. If only I were as horrible a person as he was, then maybe his story would be over and I could finally stop pretending to care what he was saying. "So I made the decision to retire from teaching, effective immediately." Hurrah! My wishful thinking had come true, and he had finished his long, arduous tale. I was almost _dead_ from boredom. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration. But I was on the way there. One way ticket on the train to corpse city, population me, as the saying goes. Actually, I've never heard anyone say that. Why did _I_ say that? Think that, I mean.

Oh, Merlin! He was retiring! _That_ had taken me a while. Maybe I was mentally subnormal, as Severus delighted in suggesting. Then again, I could have just been drunk. "Retiring, eh?" I finally said, after several minutes of expectant glaring from Severus. "Fascinating." He made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat and stared at the ceiling, jaw clenched. "But what are you going to do? And who's going to teach Potions now? Because I don't want to have to be stuck with an angry old man telling me what to do all day and calling me stupid. Merlin knows I get enough of that already."

Severus glared at me for several minutes as though he was willing his eyes to pop out of his skull and beat me senseless, but said nothing and instead turned to McGonagall. "Minerva," he said, not unclenching his jaw, "Will you please tell Raphaela the glaringly obvious truth she's far too dense to pick up on her own? We might be dead before she figures it out without help."

"That's just mean," I said, acting hurt. I turned my head downwards and looked up at him, doing my best puppy-dog look. He grimaced at me and furrowed his eyebrows slightly, but I could see that his jaw was unclenched. Score!

"You infuriate me," he said, by way of an apology. Well, it was the best I was going to get, so I smiled and nodded at him. McGonagall was watching us expectantly, a small smile playing across her face.

"Are you going to answer my questions, since _he_ won't?" I asked, shooting a mini-glare over at Severus. McGonagall raised her eyebrows and placed her hands on her hips.

"Certainly, Raphaela. As to what he's going to do instead of teach, I can only assume he'll be far too busy planning your wedding, or at least helping you a large amount, to be thinking about anything else." Severus twitched in a way that was more like a spasm at the word 'wedding', as though McGonagall saying it made it more real than anything he and I had discussed. "And I'm surprised myself that you haven't figured out the new Potions Master yet. Perhaps all the things Severus has been saying about you have been true."

My jaw dropped and I turned to face him. "So you've been saying things about me! What have you been saying about me?!"

"It is none of your concern what goes on when you are too distracted by a particularly interesting coleslaw to notice anything around you." Wow, he was really pulling out the barbs this morning. Why was I even marrying him? Oh, right. That love thing. Damn. I turned to McGonagall, making a small, whiny noise in my throat that I hoped carried the connotation of 'tell me what he's been saying or you won't get a moment's peace between now and Easter'.

"I quote," she started, looking at the ceiling as if attempting to remember the exact wording.

"Minerva," Severus said warningly, but McGonagall acted as though she hadn't heard him.

"'Raphaela Vialle has the mind of a two-year-old. She couldn't figure out a one-piece jigsaw'," she recited, smiling. I glared indiscriminately. Severus looked as though he were writhing in horror, but I dismissed it as his normal, insane behaviour. "'But Merlin's beard, she amazes me every day, and I love the idiot girl. She keeps things interesting, even if she does infuriate me so much that I want to toss her off North Tower'." Note to self: if Severus ever suggests a stroll up a tower, run and don't look back until there are several thick walls between us. But, oh. That was a nice thing for him to have said, if you discounted all the stuff about me being completely stupid, which I did. But I'm _not_ stupid. Just… a little slow on the uptake, sometimes. And in this case, the uptake was… I was going to figure it out soon, I was due for an a-ha moment…

"Me?" I said it quietly, hoping to be right. I had the horrible feeling that Severus and McGonagall were going to laugh, loudly and scornfully, and tell me that I was completely incompetent. Well, with Severus that was a given, but still. They would laugh at me and tell me that I could never teach, that I was far too inept and possibly dangerous. And they'd be right, I'd end up tripping over a cauldron or just downright annoying the students so much they'd revolution against me. But they didn't laugh. I looked up, and saw that Severus was looking stunned, and McGonagall was looking pleased.

"Well," Severus said, regaining his composure, "I suppose I've been proven wrong. I did think that you needed _everything_ to be spelt out for you, but apparently it's just most things."

"You know, you're being really mean to me this morning," I said huffily, glaring at him. He raised his eyebrows and stared at me.

"Is that the time?" McGonagall said, looking nowhere in particular. "I must be off. Good day to you both." And with that, she left the room, closing the door behind her. I didn't avert my eyes from Severus, though. I wanted him to know how much I _meant_ this glare.

"Idiot girl," he said, though his expression was softer than I was used to. He walked towards me and put his arms around me, sighing in a tired sort of way. "You know that I love you. Don't make me say that again today or I'll have your guts for garters."

Eurgh! Who _says_ that? That's just disgusting. Way to gross me out, you gross-outer. He had to pay for that. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" I said, smiling slightly, but angling my face downwards so that he couldn't see it.

"Don't make me say it again." His jaw was clenched again and he was staring down at me like I'd set off a mousetrap on his ear, but I looked up at him and attempted to look pitiful. After a few moments of our standoff, he sighed in irritation and put one hand on the back of my head. "I love you, you incompetent buffoon." It was a nice feeling, annoying Severus into being nice to me. One I hoped to repeat many, many times. Because I was annoying Raphaela, and I was going to annoy him until the day I died.


	14. I’d like to Plead Temporary Insanity

**Chapter Fourteen: I'd like to Plead Temporary Insanity**

Once I'd realised that I was being made Potions Master of Hogwarts, it took me a further few minutes to _realise I was being made the actual. Potions. Master. Of. Hogwarts. _Sweet Merlin's beard, that kind of thing you just did not get used to. Well, I suppose Severus had, but that's entirely beside the point. The point was that I was going to run around the room, squealing and giggling, no matter how many times Severus told me to stay still and shut up before his eardrums burst and he got a neck injury from watching me run circles around him. Eventually, he growled like a lion before it pounces and cast a full-body bind hex on me. Running at the time, I smashed into a bookcase and fell backwards. Unable to shield myself from the onslaught of books falling on me, I turned my eyes to Severus and gave him the strongest, most evil glare I could muster from my frozen, completely stationary position. That poop-head. Eventually, he wandered over as though I were a book he was thinking of perusing, and looked down at me.

"You know," he said slowly and dangerously, "it is tempting to leave you like this. Merlin knows I could use a break."

I made a high-pitched squealing noise in the back of my throat, which had been mercifully left out of the curse, and he smiled slightly.

"You're right, I think," he said, turning his wand over in his hands. "I find that I'm missing your incessant whining already. And your incompetent babbling. And not to mention your habit of staring off into space every four seconds." Oh, I did _not_ stare off into space every four seconds. I may have had a slight habit of going off on mental tangents, but they were barely noticeable. He lifted the curse, and I stood up, pushing the books off me as I did so.

"I do _not_ whine incessantly, or babble incompetently. Is incompetently a word? I think it is, and if it's not I'm going to make it one just to prove you wrong."

"What?"

Okay, maybe I'd said all that a bit too fast for the human ear to recognize it as being actual words and not just a high-pitched buzzing. But damn it, my point still stood. "Don't worry," I said, brushing myself off. "I was just talking about some extremely intelligent and not at all incompetent stuff that I wouldn't expect you to understand." Ha! Take _that_, Mr. I-Think-I'm-So-Smart. Instead of being knocked to the ground by my wicked zinger, he simply raised an eyebrow and stared at me. Well, I was sure that the knock-down was building itself up. There was no other explanation.

"I see," he said eventually. "Well, don't hurt yourself."

Oh, fabulous. He had a retort and even though it wasn't that great, it was better than anything I could come up with. Or… was it? "Yeah? Well you suck!" Oh, bloody hell. Way to prove a point.

"I suck, do I?" he said, he words sounding very strange coming from him. "Well, perhaps you'd rather I was still at St. Mungo's, lacking a memory." Hmm. I had to line this up perfectly. Once I'd shifted myself a few inches to the left, I charged at him. I saw his eyes widen in surprise, but he didn't have time to cast a shield charm or even raise his arms in defence before I barreled into him, sending us both flying onto the springy mattress of the bed. I snaked my arms around his torso and tightened until he was gasping for breath, and only then did I relent. I was like a boa constrictor with my affection. It was coming at you, and chances are it would kill you, but that's what you get for underestimating me.

"Don't. Be. Stupid." I said the words as sternly and deliberately as I could, so that he could learn his lesson. Damn it, he was going to learn it, even if I had to beat it into him with a lead pipe. "Don't even begin to think about trying to suggest something like that. For all you talk about me being stupid, sometimes you say the dumbest things I've ever heard. I love you, and nothing will _ever_ change that, do you understand me? _Ever_."

He was staring at me as though I'd gone mad, which was probably reasonable, considering that I'd just tackled him and nearly asphyxiated him before yelling at him. Go team sanity. "Remind me again why I'm condemning myself to a lifetime of _this_?"

"Because you love me," I said, relinquishing my iron grip on his waist. "And it's making you do harmful, self-destructive things like marrying me."

"Sounds reasonable," he said, putting a hand on the side of my head. Ha! He conceded! I won that round. Now, all I had to do was to win approximately seven thousand more, and we'd be even. I let out an exhalation of breath, feeling quite contented lying there. My head was lying at a very uncomfortable angle and I wished I had a pillow under it, but that was just the price you pay. My neck was kind of starting to get faint bendy-pains though. Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Damn it. I lifted my head up and used the power of my super-amazing neck muscles to keep it straight, but that had the side effect of drawing Severus' attention, as I probably looked a bit stupid with my hovering head.

"Erm…" I said, casting about for an explanation. "Do you know… what the time is?" Ha! I'd managed to distract him with my incredibly cunning feminine wiles and he was completely powerless to stop me.

"Yes, it's just gone nine," he said. Oh, bloody hell. I was late for my own _very first class as actual Potions Master of Hogwarts, holy crap_, and he _knew_ it. I could see he was loving it, trying to keep the cold smile off his face. "You'd better run, or you'll be late."

"Oh, shutup," I muttered, giving him one of his own crushing glares before running out the door. The last thing I saw was him trying not to laugh before I slammed the door shut behind me, running along the corridor to the classroom. I had to admit, it was a lot easier to get to classes now that I'd started staying at Severus' place at nights, instead of my own rooms a few floors up. In a manner of moments I was in the classroom, panting and out of breath while students milled around the locked door, muttering amongst themselves. It seemed that the case of the locked classroom door was a mystery to them, as Severus (or Professor Snape to them) had always been positively early to class. I managed to choke out a breathless 'hi' with a smile before going to unlock the door. With the keys that I'd left in the drawer of my bedside table. Idiot! Stupid, stupid girl. I'd never even had to bring my keys along before, as I'd always had Severus to let me in. "Er… okay, so I've just left my keys in my room, I'm… I'm going to go and grab those, and then we can make a potion, or something."

A potion! Bloody hell, I hadn't even thought of what to assign the students to make for today. Understandable, though, as I'd had barely half an hour's warning before my first class. It was really quite unfair, I thought to myself as I walked quickly back from whence I'd come. I burst back into the room and Severus stared. I'd been gone for such a short period of time that he hadn't even stood up from where I'd knocked him down.

"You know, it is generally accepted that the lessons go for an hour," he said, smirking at me with one eyebrow raised. "Not four seconds. Unless the potion you're having them make is just boiled water, and in that case, I'm sorry to break it to you, but that's not really a potion. That's just boiled water."

"Shutup!" I cried again, in an odd high-pitched tone. I clamped my mouth shut and walked over to the bedside table, trying to slip the keys into my pocket so that he wouldn't see. He did, though, and got even smirkier. Which isn't an actual word, but I'm going to pretend it is because that's what he did. Then, I did the only thing I could do. I held my head up high, looked down my nose at him as though I _hadn't_ forgotten the keys, and walked right back out of that dungeon with as much dignity as I could muster. Which, considering the circumstance, wasn't very much.


	15. Problems, Solutions, and the Talk

**Chapter Fifteen: Problems, Solutions, and the Talk, Which Is Totally Gross.**

So, once I'd gotten back to the classroom, _with_ keys this time, I could unlock the door and let the thoroughly confused students into the room. Who were they? Second years, if my memory of the timetable served correct. Now, what kind of potions did second-years make? What had _I_ made, as a second-year? Nothin' but a load of trouble, har har. I'm so funny. Think, Raphaela. What potion was totally awesome, but easy enough for a second-year to do? Surely there'd be some sort of curriculum for this kind of thing? Of course! I could just steal whatever plans Severus had had for the students. But then, I probably shouldn't run off again in class-time, I'd already messed up my first day enough. I just had to think of something.

"Let's start with a little questioning, shall we?" I asked, a plan forming in my ever-so-slightly un-cunning brain. "See if you've learned anything in your time here. Who can tell me what potion you guys were going to make today?" It was a good plan. Or it would have been, if the second-years didn't look completely bewildered at my question. One girl raised her hand, and I pointed at her. "Yes! You. With the weird fringe." She lowered her raised hand to her forehead and looked stricken. Oops. She got over it though, and looked at me uneasily.

"I heard your rooms were up on the fourth floor," she said. Well, that was a weird non-sequitur. It hadn't answered my question at all. Unless they were going to make some kind of room location potion, but did that even exist? I was going to bet that it didn't, though I guess I didn't know everything about potions. Note to self: learn everything about potions so that second-years don't stump you.

"I guess they are, yeah," I said, suddenly feeling a bit awkward. There was no way I was ready to be a teacher, I couldn't even get a simple question answered. "But that didn't really answer my question, Miss…?"

"Helaine Groombridge," the girl said, looking thoughtful. "But when you went to your room to get keys, you went off to the end of the floor that doesn't even have stairs to the upper levels. And you were back in about ten seconds."

Yikes. Were the children ready to hear about the birds and the bees? See kids, I stay in Professor Snape's quarters because he's scared of monsters under the bed, and he needs someone there to protect him. Would that even work? How old were second-years? Twelve? Thirteen? No way that's old enough. They should be chasing hoops down a dirt road with sticks, or something. That's what kids do, right? "I apparated."

"You can't apparate in Hogwarts," she retorted, looking smug. Bloody hell. Second-years! Just old enough to be at that obnoxious, I-know-everything stage. "And I heard you telling someone to shutup."

"Well trust me, you're going to that word again today, probably several times," I snapped. What was the _deal_ with this girl? "Okay, so I was in Severus' – Professor Snape's – room. Because I am hitting that. So what, you want to fight about it?"

"Gross!" she cried, scrunching up her nose.

"Yeah, well, wait a few years, and when some sixteen-year-old boy with a face like the surface of Mars and an embarrassingly visible boner asks you out on a study date, _just as friends, I promise,_ and then tries to get to second base in that oh-so-special clumsy, sweaty sixteen-year-old boy kind of way, you get back to me on what's really gross." Oh dear, I'd said too much. "But uh… don't give it away for free or anything."

Some kid with too-long hair snorted in the front row. He looked up at me and said cynically, "And how many galleons would you recommend we 'give it away' for, _Professor_?"

"That's not what I meant," I insisted. "It's not what I meant, you little punk. But it _is_ totally gross, unless you love the person very, very much. Or they're super hot. Or they have some kind of accent. Or you're really, really drunk. Um… shouldn't you be making some sort of potion?"

"Shouldn't Professor Snape be here?" It was that annoying Groombridge kid again. "Shouldn't you have assigned us a potion to make?"

"I was getting to that!" I said shrilly. Stupid kid! "Um… make a… potion of… forgetfulness?" I hurriedly raided the drawers of the desk until I found an old potions book. I did a quick finding charm, and it flipped open to a simple forgetfulness draught. Excellent! Now, all I had to do was to manage that spell that Severus had which would make the instructions write themselves on the board. I'd never been very good at these sorts of charms, but in a stroke of excellent luck in this horrific train wreck of a lesson, I accomplished it. It was a good thing that the potion was easy, because the lesson was already twenty minutes gone. Great first lesson, Raphaela. Really great.

"Oh yeah, and Professor Snape is retired, as of this morning," I said, realizing that the Groombridge girl had asked about him. "I'm Potions Master now." A great cheer went up through half the classroom, with the other half looking cautiously pleased. Well, that's what he gets for being such a grumpy old bat. Annoying twelve-year-olds not liking him. Yeah. Take that.

By the end of the lesson, I was so irritated I wanted to kick one of the stupid kids in the teeth. I'd progressed from "stop asking me things", to "shut up and leave me alone", then finally to "for the love of Merlin, I'm going to put a bullet between my eyes if another one of you says anything to me at all". Productive day in a pleasant learning environment. I mean, if it had been questions about _potions_, that would have been fine, but all they were doing was asking if Severus was dead and if I'd killed him to get his job, and I did not need that kind of reminder of what we'd narrowly avoided. I was so glad when they left and I got a fifteen-minute break between classes that I could have cried. I didn't, though. Instead I ran back to Severus' room and fell down on the bed, screaming into a pillow.

"How was your first lesson, Professor Vialle?" Severus asked, standing by one of the fake windows and looking down upon me with his arms crossed in front of his chest. "Went well, then?"

"Oh, let's see," I said irritably. "I was late, forgot the key to the classroom, then I had to give _the_ _talk _to the entire class, and I think I might've told them to just get pissed and go wild. It was an absolute wreck."

"What talk?" he asked, nonplussed. I stared at him. He continued to stare back, clearly ignorant of what I was trying to say.

"You know!" I cried, sitting up and waving my arms about. Okay, so I was never any good at charades. Who cares, though, charades is a stupid game. "_The _talk. The _talk_. The one that your mother gives you when you're too young to remember, then again when you're old enough to feel as awkward as a hippogriff in a ball gown."

"Ah. I see. Well then, we will probably be hearing from parents who are outraged that you are exposing their bundle of joy to the horrors of the real world, and also from parents who are grateful that you've done their dirty work." He looked more amused than anything else, and it was contagious. I had to laugh. I rolled onto my back and giggled loudly, hanging my head over the edge of the bed so that my hair hung downwards towards the ground.

"So what have you been doing for the past hour?" I said, once I'd gotten over my little laughing fit. He sighed and sat next to me, shaking his head.

"I have come to understand the incessant whining that plagued me in your first months here," he said, confusing me. What on earth was he talking about? "When alone and with no papers to grade or curriculums to create, I am… to use your expression, bored as a rake."

"Ah, the English language," I said wistfully. "So many uses in day-to-day life, I love it so."

"Er… indeed. However, I have been thinking," he said, and he did indeed look thoughtful. Way to match your words with your expressions, Severus. I'd give you a gold star but unfortunately I'm all out, because apparently matching words and expressions is not particularly taxing. "What on earth does the phrase 'bored as a rake' mean?"

"Ah! I'm glad you asked," I said excitedly. "It is a phrase of my own creation, actually, though I can't verify that. I'd be ever so upset if I found that somebody else had thought of it first. Simply put, a rake has no use outside of the few times it is used in the autumn to collect leaves, yes? So logically, a rake would be pretty bored most of the time."

He stared for what seemed like a lifetime. "I cannot find fault with your reasoning, but I must impress upon you the severity of your current level of idiocy." Ah, that was the Severus I knew and loved. A horrible, spiteful person.

"You know, without you in the classes, they aren't fun like they used to be," I muttered, trying my best to look sad. "I'm bored by myself, and I don't think I can handle these stupid kids. I wish you were still there with me."

"I agree," he said, making me start. He agreed with me? That was a first. And about a subject that suggested he should be around children, too. There must have been some kind of rift in the space-time continuum. "When I went to Minerva and announced my resignation, very little thought was given to what I would do with my time afterwards. I may have been too hasty in my decision."

"I thought you didn't want to be a teacher… because nothing that required you to be one had any sway over you." I vaguely remembered the dull story Severus had told when informing me of his retiring, though I mostly just remembered being bored… _as a rake_.

"Yes, but now… there isn't any Dumbledore, or the Order, or the Dark Lord, but there is you," he said to me, and I cracked up. "Would you care to share what you find so amusing?"

"You can be such a little girl sometimes, Severus," I said between snorts of laughter. "Oh, there's _you_," I imitated him, causing his face to contort with rage. "You make me want to be a teacher, 'cause I looooove you. I'm a little girl, with _feelings_."

He made a livid noise at the back of his throat and stood up abruptly, walking over to the faux-window again and looking out at the faux-scenery. Every so often he'd shoot a murderous glare in my direction, but I was too amused to care. I just kept on laughing until I was good and ready to stop. Or I would have done, if Severus hadn't gotten so furious with me that he'd cast a silencing charm on me, and refused to lift it until I'd given him a written apology. Unfortunately, my first written apology was a bit poorly worded, and instead of lifting the curse, he just glared at me. So what if I'd just written _I'm sorry you're such a little girl_. It was still an apology, and he was not keeping his promise. Eventually I had to properly apologise, and then he relented and lifted the charm. I was tempted to call him a little girl again, but decided that I wanted to keep the use of my voice.

"So, you don't like being bored as a rake, do you?" I asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Not particularly," he replied, staring out of the fake window. I thought for approximately half a second.

"We could be co-Potions Masters." He turned to me, a slight smile on his face, and let out a small burst of odd-sounding laughter. It may just have been odd-sounding because he was not generally one to laugh at anything at all, but it still gave me the heebie-jeebies.

"That arrangement seems theoretically acceptable." Well, that was as good as I was going to get.


	16. Very, Very Awkward

**Chapter Sixteen: Very, Very Awkward**

Clearing our co-Potions Mastership with McGonagall was a lot easier than I'd assumed. She'd asked why we didn't just split the classes as Professor Trelawney had with Firenze, the other Divination teacher (and why couldn't I have had him as a teacher when I was in school? He would have been more accepting of my various states of post-inebriation), but Severus soon explained that it was because I was at such a level of incompetence that I couldn't be trusted alone with boiling poison and children. I then explained that it was actually because he was such a little girl that he couldn't bear to spend more than five minutes away from me. He then continued to say that it was _actually_ because no he was not a little girl, and he wanted to throttle me to within an inch of my life for even suggesting such a thing. I began to formulate an eloquent and articulate response, but McGonagall saw fit to interrupt us and tell us that it was fine, and asked politely if we could relocate our argument because she had a lot of work to do.

It was a very productive meeting. However, there was another pressing matter that had to be resolved.

"Hey, little girl," I shouted by way of a greeting that evening when I entered the Great Hall. Severus turned his head and glared at me, looking like he wanted nothing more than to stab me repeatedly. "Ha, ha. I said little girl and you looked."

"What do you _want_, Raphaela?" he asked, still giving me the full force of his glare. I sat down next to him and drew my legs up so that I was sitting cross-legged on the seat. The glare was getting a bit intense for me though, so I decided instead to concentrate on the lemon meringue pie that was looking so delicious in front of me. I took a slice and started eating it, still ignoring Severus' glares. Finally, I decided that I couldn't ignore them any longer.

"We should set a date, or something," I said, turning back to him. He turned a peculiar shade of violet and stared determinedly at his goblet. "Because otherwise it'll just never get done. And I need some kind of time frame for the planning and whatnots."

"Is that so," he said, sounding like he was putting in a tremendous amount of effort to get those words out. "Ex… excellent."

"Ha, ha, you're scared," I taunted, and he snapped his head around to glare at me. "Anyway, I was thinking sometime in the Easter break, and I know that it's kind of soon, like, only two months away, but I think that I can get everything organized by then, and I thought that we really should have it in one of the breaks, and if we miss this break then we'll have to wait until Christmas, and I am _so_ not having my wedding overshadowed by Christmas, and also if it's in the Easter break it's near my birthday and so my parents will probably be in town anyway and oh sweet Merlin's beard, I haven't told my parents."

"I'm sorry, I only caught half of that," he said, looking bewildered. "You put it on whatever day you want."

"Thanks for the input," I said dryly, sending him a withering glare. "If you don't care, I'll look for a venue and check when they're free. And I'm keeping my last name. Raphaela Snape just sounds weird."

"You do whatever you want with your name," he said, turning purple again and going back to his pie. Bloody hell, I hope he doesn't go purple on the day. That's definitely something that I do not need. I heard a small laugh coming from the other side of Severus and I leant forward to see McGonagall chortling into her pie. She noticed me looking and stopped laughing, though she still had traces of it on her face.

"What's funny?" I asked. She let out another small laugh.

"I was merely considering whether, when we are blessed with the fruits of your union, their surname will be Snape-Vialle or Vialle-Snape." I heard a sound that seemed like a cross between a cough and a laugh coming from Severus, but I was too horror-struck to pay any attention to what he was doing.

"What the… why… why would you say that?!" I squealed. "Why would you suggest such a thing? That's… don't say that! No! Never! Never ever!" McGonagall raised her eyebrows and turned her attention to Snape, who was still making that odd cough-laugh noise.

"Why, I do believe the man is choking," she said, pulling out her wand and flicking it in his direction. Something contracted around his midsection and suddenly he was breathing again, looking purpler than I'd ever seen him.

"Thank you Minerva, though I did wonder if you were ever going to do something about my plight," he said, slowly returning to normal colour. "And I agree, for once, with Raphaela. Do not ever mention anything that could be construed as having some connection with the topic of… _that_, ever again, or I won't be responsible for my actions."

"As I was saying before, I haven't even owled my parents about this whole engagement thing," I said, returning to my delicious, delicious pie. "They're probably going to want to, I don't know, meet you or something."

"That sounds thrilling," he replied sarcastically. "Erm… you will let me know if you need assistance with the… organizational aspect of this."

"Sure thing, little girl," I said cheerfully, making him glare again. Fabulous.

I received a reply from my parents barely a day after I'd sent my owl. They berated me for about sixteen pages about having not told them that I was even seeing anyone, let alone being engaged, then ended with a reassurance that they were in Hogsmeade anyway for one of my father's business conferences so they'd _love_ to meet Severus, thanks for the invitation, even though I hadn't actually invited them to meet him at all. They even told me the time and the place, which made me wonder if they actually thought I'd invited them or they were just being passive aggressive.

Oh, and thanks Mum, for saying "And we're so happy that you finally turned out to be straight after all. You know your father had his doubts, and now we can look forward to grandchildren." Yeah, right. The day I have a child is the day I shave my head and wear slippers shaped like animals, which just so happens to be never. But my parents were in town, and they were going to go to 'brunch' (my parents are too old to say brunch without sounding ridiculously fancy) with Severus and I. That's just… great. So great, in fact, that I decided not to tell him until the day. Then again… this _was_ the day. With a terrified squeal and the realization that I only had an hour to make Severus presentable for my stupid, want-to-meet-everyone-I've-ever-known parents, I dashed down to the dungeons from the Great Hall breakfast table, followed by many confused stares.

"It's today!" I cried when I arrived in the dungeons, causing Severus to stare at me, bewildered. "My parents want to meet you today. In an hour and a half. Wear real clothes! Not robes!"

He turned violet again and looked incredibly uncomfortable. "What makes you think I own anything other than robes?" He sounded strained, and he had folded his arms tightly.

"Argh!" I cried, dragging him out of the room and down the corridor. "Then we have to go shopping. You are not going to see my parents in a glorified dress. And I don't _care_ what you say, I am going to do things to your hair whether you like it or not." It was a mark of how uncomfortable the prospect of meeting my parents made him that he did not object or even scowl too much as I forced him into real clothes, though he did look very strange in anything other than his usual black dress. Yes, I said dress. And I will not take it back. Those things are dumb. I didn't do much to his hair, I just changed the parting from centre to side, and I must say that it looked so good, I just wanted to take him back to Hogwarts that very second and to hell with my parents and their plans. Unfortunately I didn't want to be rude, so we went along to the specified brunch-tastic location and met with… my parents.

My mother had dyed-brown hair. The last time I'd seen her had been a couple of months before I left for the job at Hogwarts, and it had grown down to her collarbone since then. She looked happy but slightly vacant, as always. My father just looked stern, as usual, with his thin-rimmed glasses and walrus moustache. They both stared at Severus like they wanted to bore through his skull with the power of their combined peer, but thankfully he could stand up to their staring onslaught, though I could see his jaw was clenched tightly.

"You're Severus, then?" my mother asked, a smile on her face.

"Indeed," he replied. What stimulating conversation.

"Well," she continued, "I'd love to say that we'd heard all about you, but unfortunately that isn't the case, is it Raphaela?"

"No, Mum," I mumbled, holding my left elbow with my right hand. I almost felt as though I were about to be sent to my room without any dessert.

"We'd love to hear all about you," she continued, turning back to Severus with the smile broad on her face. "Isn't that right, Martin?"

My father made a non-committal grunting noise and continued to stare. "So. Work up at the school, then, boy?" It was a bit weird of my father to call Severus 'boy', considering that he himself was probably only about fifteen years older, but I didn't question it.

"Indeed," he said again. "Potions."

My mother looked thoughtful for a moment. "When Raphaela was at Hogwarts?"

"Er… indeed."

"I thought you sounded familiar," she said, though her smile was starting to look a little bit forced. And here it comes, the deliciously horrifying uncomfortable silence. I knew this brunch was a bad idea. "Say, Martin," she spoke again several moments later, cheery once more, "isn't it marvelous that Raphaela's straight?" Bad, bad idea.


	17. The Wedding

**Chapter Seventeen: The Wedding**

Okay, so the brunch with my parents could have gone better. And it didn't help that the first three venues that I wanted were booked solid, so I had to go with my fourth option, which was still very nice, but it wasn't perfect-style nice. I'd managed to find the perfect dress after weeks of fruitless searching, but since my boobies kept popping out even just standing in the dressing room, I had to say goodbye to it. But I had to look on the positive side. The dress I settled on _was_ beautiful, and it was very good at holding in everything that had to be held in. Everyone we'd invited was coming. We'd (well, I'd) booked a totally awesome Poison cover band, and they'd agreed to play _Talk Dirty To Me_ instead of that here-comes-the-bride nonsense when I walked down the aisle, even if I had to stretch the truth a little and tell Severus that they were a classical band. Well, they were classic, which is pretty much the same. And I'd managed to convince Severus that he should wear proper clothes to the ceremony and reception. Yes, it was shaping up to be a mighty fine sort of a wedding, even if Severus was currently mad at me for making a slight alteration to the invitations without his knowledge. So maybe I'd added a little P.S. at the bottom, something along the lines of _any attempts to look prettier than or upstage Raphaela in any way will fall victim to the stinging hex. I'm talking to you, Aunt Sally._

But today was my wedding day, and I was as excited as a girl could be. Even if I had to stay in a separate hotel room the previous night so that Severus wouldn't see me, you know, 'cause it's bad luck. I figured that with my annoyingness level and his ability to get angry with me over every single stupid little thing, we might just end up needing all the luck we could get. Soon enough, my maid of honor was knocking on my door, telling me that it was time to go. I let her in and took a final stare in the mirror. I couldn't believe what the hair and makeup girl had done to me. I actually looked _pretty_. I held the bouquet of peonies and cream tulips in front of me, trying to take in what I looked like so that I wouldn't forget during the ceremony.

My maid of honor was a girl called Lucindy who'd been my best friend throughout Hogwarts. We'd even lived together for a little while after we graduated, but found that we actually couldn't stand each other for long periods of time. Even when her work took her to far-off places (she was a curse-breaker for Gringotts) I knew she'd be back in a second if I needed her. There really wasn't any contest as to who to call for the maid of honor gig, even though we'd drifted apart somewhat over the past couple of years.

"Shit the bed, Raphie, look at you," she said, clapping her hands together. Ahh, that was my old Lucindy. Vulgar as a sailor. "You almost look like you're going to get married today."

"Almost," I said, smiling back at her. "Like the dress?"

"You look like sex on fuckin' legs, Raphie. Let's go, we'll be late." She took my elbow and we arrived moments later at the apparition point. It was a small stone shed that exited out onto a beautiful flower garden with a swan-filled pond adjacent. My father was waiting for me in the shed, and he bid the both of us good morning before Lucindy waved at me and ran off to join the other bridesmaids near the minister. I couldn't see any sign of Severus, though, and before my father could say anything else to me, a tall blonde man walked into the shed and addressed me. It was Lucius Malfoy, and I'd always been opposed to the decision to make him best man. Severus kept insisting that he had repented for his actions, and that even if he had been in league with Voldemort, they were still friends and that would not change. And after meeting Lucindy, he'd convinced me that it was a fair trade. I didn't quite believe him, but I had to pay attention to what Lucius was saying.

"I do believe you are needed," he said, taking me by the shoulder and leading me out of the shed, towards a hedged-off area of the garden not being used for the wedding. "Severus is having… issues."

"What, can't he do his tie properly?" I asked, irritable. Like Severus could complain about anything, when I was the one who'd organized most of this damned wedding. If anyone had issues, it should be me. Lucius led me over to a more secluded area, where I saw Severus sitting on a large rock, facing away from me. He started to turn when he heard us approach, but I screeched _"Don't look at me!"_ and he turned back quickly. "It's bad luck, you twat-face."

"It's all bad luck," he snapped, sounding mildly concerned. This was weird, I wasn't used to this tone of voice coming from him. "When I asked you I was so sure…"

"You are not going to call this off," I said, putting my hands on my hips, not that he could see me. I still had my bouquet in my right hand, though it was about to go flying towards his head if he kept this up. "Do you have any idea how hard I've worked on this thing? All the times I didn't sleep because I was so scared I wouldn't get it done in time? All of the -"

"Leave." He almost shouted it at me, though he stayed turned away. "For Merlin's sake, Raphaela, why are you even doing this? You… deserve so much better…"

"I'll tell you what I deserve," I said, just as angry as he sounded. "I deserve a man who marries me when he says he will. But I don't give a flying doxy about what I deserve, this is about what I _want_. And I want to be married to you."

"Leave," he repeated. "I'll… be there."

I stared at the back of his head for a moment, then stormed back to where Lucius was standing, a respectable distance away from us. I grabbed him by his elbow and continued to storm, down through a garden path and around the hedge to where the attendees were starting to wonder where we were. The band started to play, but I glared at them so fiercely they abated, and I stormed right up to where the minister was standing. I took my place next to Lucindy, crossing my arms tightly and glaring at anyone who dared to look at me. And I waited.

And I waited some more. I was beginning to feel like a fool, standing in front of all these people in my big white dress and large bouquet, glaring insolently like a child. And still, no Severus appeared to cast my doubts asunder. I was almost about to stomp my bouquet into the ground and tear my dress in anger when I heard a frantic voice.

"Raphaela!" My heart leapt in my ribcage and I smiled broadly, but then I realised that it wasn't Severus' voice. It was coming from the stone shed, and it was the sweet, hopeful voice of Johnny. He burst out and ran up the aisle towards me, breathless. "Raphaela," he said again. He certainly wasn't dressed for a wedding, in jeans and a t-shirt with an open button-up shirt over the top. "Getting married today?"

"That's a stupid question," I said, almost growling a little. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here because… I realised when I saw you at the hospital that I'm not over you. I'm not, and I never will be, because I believe that you are meant to be with me. Please Raph, don't get married to this guy. Come with me, I'll do whatever it takes to get you back into my life." Well… that was sweet of him. I cast a glance towards the hedge, where I'd been sure I'd see Severus' sheepish face poking out. I saw nothing. So maybe I didn't love Johnny, not like I loved Severus. But I liked him. And Merlin knows that this guy would actually go through with marrying me, or at least do a better job of it than Severus did. And he never called me stupid, or hexed me. I was beginning to wonder why I was even marrying Severus in the first place. Johnny was so pretty, and he never yelled at me. Like, _ever_.

I let Johnny take my white gloved hand that was unoccupied with carrying the bouquet, and tried to ignore the murmurs that were spreading like wildfire through the guests. I let him lead me back down the aisle, towards the stone shed, and away from my so-called dream wedding. I felt horribly numb, the bouquet even felt like it was wilting in my limp hand. I felt tears slowly dripping down my face and hoped against hope that my mascara wasn't running. The last thing I needed was to get a stain on this dress that I was probably going to have to return. _Why_ hadn't Severus wanted to marry me? Had I not been pretty enough, or smart enough, or had I just been too annoying for him to handle in the end? I'd thought that he loved me, at least enough not to stand me up at our own wedding, in front of everybody we knew. Actually, I didn't even care about the embarrassment. I'd get stood up a thousand times if it meant I could be married to him afterwards, and he didn't even care enough to show up when he said he would. Well, I'd had enough. I didn't care anymore.

I was leaving.

-----

A/N: Just a little side note, the peonies and cream tulips in Raphaela's bouquet represent happy marriage and 'I will love you forever' respectively. I thought it was a cute touch.


	18. I Don't

Hey, sorry for leaving you hanging for like four days about this sort-of cliffhangerishness, but I haven't been near a computer for a while. But hey, you know i'm good for it. I'll now return you to your SUPERUPDATEYGOODNESS.

**Chapter Eighteen: I Don't**

I stared into the shed, where my father was still standing, waiting to walk me down the aisle and give me away. He was staring at me, clearly bewildered as to why I was letting this strange man lead me away from the altar, but I simply stared back at him. I hated to do this to him, when he and my mother had been so happy for me to be getting married, but it wasn't my fault that Severus clearly didn't love me enough to go through with it. I was going to go with Johnny, and when McGonagall finally left this failed wedding, I'd get her to make me sole Potions Master again, Severus would leave, and I'd make something of my life. But damn it, I _loved_ him! I loved him so much that I'd stood alone at the altar, waiting for him like a fool. A fool who mistakenly believes that when he says he'll do something, he does it. Well, I wasn't going to let myself be so stupidly gullible again. I was going to go with Johnny, and we'd do… something. I don't know. But I was going to go with Johnny. In a minute. He still held my white gloved hand and he was gazing at me, inclining his head in the direction of the apparition shed. I took a final glance towards the hedge as I staggered clumsily into the shed, and my stomach seemed to leap into my ribcage. Severus! He was standing, one arm on the hedge to hold himself up, staring at me with a look of intense rage and desolation on his face. My hand was still in Johnny's.

"Raph, come with me," Johnny said from somewhere behind me. "Don't marry him."

"Juh…" I muttered, moving zombie-like out of the shed and towards Severus. "Can't… love Se… sor…" Holy hell, I think my brain had broken. So many things were happening at the one time, I could barely keep my knees from buckling as I continued walking. However, Severus turned, swiftly walking back towards where he'd been before. I broke into a run, which isn't a good idea when you're in heels and the ground is uneven. Fortunately, by some stroke of wedding day luck, I didn't break my ankles and I caught up with him, catching him by the elbow and turning him around to face me. The look on his face was even more horrifying up close. It looked like he wanted to stab me in the foot and watch me bleed to death. Spooky.

"I only went with him because I thought you weren't coming," I said defensively, crossing my arms. "I waited up there for ages. I felt like an idiot."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Looking like he was weighing up his words, it was a few moments before he actually spoke. "Are you aware of what our problem is, Raphaela?"

"You," I ejected angrily. "You're so emotionally stunted that any attempt to get through to you is burnt up in your atmosphere of hostility." Ha! Science metaphors! I should market those.

"It's you," he retorted, sounding severe. "Don't you ever follow through on anything?"

"You're the one who stood me up at our own wedding day, you hypocrite!" I tried to mimic his horrifyingly rage-filled expression, and I think it worked, for I saw a glimmer of surprise flit across his face.

"You went with him because you have no capacity to wait things through," he said softly, dangerously. "You are fatally impatient. When I was suffering amnesia it barely took a day for you to give up. You were going to quit Hogwarts because you couldn't handle my presence, do you remember that? If you consider something even mildly taxing on you, you give it up. Why didn't you go into pharmaceutical potions, like you'd planned to? Because it would have required four more years of schooling, and you cannot possibly sustain that level of commitment. Do you know the real reason why you didn't want to wait until the Christmas break for this wedding? Because on some level, you have basic human intelligence and you _knew_ that by Christmas you'd have changed your mind. Merlin, Raphaela, you couldn't even handle a day as Potions Master. I waited to marry you today not only because I was having second thoughts, but because I was uncertain whether you could truly see anything through, or if you would run at the first sign of trouble. You and I would never survive a marriage, because _you_ are too impatient, _you_ cannot handle obstacles in your path, _you_ get bored too easily."

"This is not my fault!" I cried, still grasping my bouquet like it was my last bastion of hope. "You made me think you weren't coming! What was I supposed to think, when you yelled at me and then made me wait up there for ages?"

"Go, then," he said, pointing behind me. "Go with him. I do not intend to prevent you from doing this."

"I thought you said you couldn't imagine a life without me in it," I said, feeling myself deflate.

"I will get used to it," he said, suddenly standing up straighter. "Unlike you, I have the uncanny ability to wait through unpleasant experiences."

I stared at him. He looked like he meant it. He really meant for me to leave with Johnny, to remove myself from his life forever. My arms were hanging limply at my sides, but I grasped the bouquet tighter than ever and sent a steely glare in Severus' direction. "No."

"Excuse me?" He'd raised one eyebrow, but he was still glaring murderously at me.

"I'm not leaving," I said, standing taller. My feet were aching slightly but I ignored it, staring resolutely at him. "You said I give up too easily, well, this time I'm not going to give up. I'm going to prove to you that I can hold out for _something_, because this something is the most important thing in my life. I'm not leaving here without you."

He sighed at me. "It's too late for that. Just leave. _He_ is waiting for the verdict." I could only assume he meant Johnny, and I felt my stomach twist at the thought of the guy standing by the apparition shed, watching our fight, hoping I'd go with him.

"No! Don't you understand? I'm _proving_ that I can be married to you! I'm not going to go with Johnny, because I'm in love with _you_!I can do this! I can!" I may have sounded a little high-pitched and whiny, but damn it all, I wasn't going to take no for an answer this time. I may have been stupid Raphaela, easily swayed and with an infinitesimally small patience level, but I would do anything it took to convince Severus to marry me. I grabbed him by the wrist and practically dragged him back around the hedge to the main area, where people were murmuring about me and some had even got up to leave. I glared at them all, a blanket-glare that surely caused a few pant-wettings. "If _anybody_ leaves before this ceremony is over, I will hunt you down and _make you pay_. Do _not_ test the mettle of an angry bride."

Everyone sat down and fell silent. Score! I was intimidating! "Raphaela, this is futile," Severus muttered behind me, as I dragged him up the aisle, gesturing wildly for the band to begin to play. They did so and I was too hell-bent on this wedding taking place to notice Severus' look of horror at their music. I ignored his annoyed mutterings and pulled him up to where the minister stood, and positioned him on the right while I stood to the left, trying my best to sustain my steely glare.

"Start," I commanded the minister, who opened his little book and began to speak.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of -"

"I don't care!" I cried, glaring at him. "Skip that bit! We're already late." I heard Severus sigh, roll his eyes and step off the raised platform, muttering something about impatience. I took a running leap and landed squarely on his back, knocking him to the ground. After listening to him lecture me about Not Jumping On Him Without Warning, a lecture I had heard several billion times, I dragged him with some difficulty back onto the platform. "Continue," I said to the minister, trying to smile sweetly but instead probably looking like a deranged madwoman.

"We are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Severus Snape and Raphaela Vialle. If anybody here has any reason why this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace." I glanced nervously towards the shed, but Johnny was nowhere in sight. He must have already apparated off, but I saw my father by the shed, looking mildly annoyed. Probably because he hadn't been able to walk me up the aisle like in a traditional wedding. Well, I supposed that I'd never really expected traditional, where Severus was involved. "Do you, Raphaela, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

"I do," I said, shooting a glare at Severus. He shot a matching glare back at me, and I saw the minister raise his eyebrows to my left.

"And do you, Severus -"

"I do not," he said, still glaring, not taking his eyes off me. "You think you want this now, but who knows when you will change your mind? Five years? Ten years? Two days? An hour? One thing is certain, you _will_ change your mind, and there won't be a thing either of us can do about it."

"I will _not_, Severus. You may be so terrified of actually committing and forming a proper relationship with someone that you'll invent any excuse to get out of it, but I can see through you, for once." I was still glaring, and the minister looked like he had no idea what to do next. "I love you, and if you don't believe anything else I say, believe that, because I've never been surer of anything in my life. I'm not going to change my mind. I will _always_ love you. I may not be able to follow through on anything, but I'd go through hell for you, and you know it, and that's why you're so scared. The trick is to ignore the fear, though, because I _know_ that you want this, because I know that you love me, and you always will. This is our wedding day, damn it, and I will _not_ have you ruining it just because you can. Now you are going to marry the hell out of me, whether you like it or not."

He looked surprised, but he continued to glare at me. I didn't relent, though. I glared right back at him. I don't know how long we spent glaring at each other, because everyone around us seemed too scared to even breathe loudly, but it felt like I spent hours trying to glare him down.

Finally, he blinked. "I do."

-----

A/N: Anyone who caught the little reference in this chapter gets some virtual cookies. I just couldn't resist including it, but now I'm going to have that song in my head all day. That is the price you pay, though.


	19. Congratulations and Inseminations

**Chapter Nineteen: Congratulations and Inseminations**

We'd done it. We were actually married. All the build-up, all the planning, all the preparations, and now it had happened. And we were married. It was terrifying, overwhelming to think about. I had just barely turned twenty-eight, and I was _married_. I felt a small pang of regret. I'd loved being single. I'd loved meeting a new guy, and I'd loved the light-headed, stomach-twisting feeling of falling for a new person, and I'd loved the First Kiss That Changes Everything. But now, I was never to experience that again. But I didn't really mind that much, because spending every day for the rest of my life with Severus meant that I'd be falling for him over and over every day. Being with him was just _wonderful_, and I wouldn't trade it for all the new guys in the world.

He'd stopped glaring at me after the minister told him to kiss the bride, though he had to be told several times as he was visibly horrified at the prospect of doing it in front of everybody. He'd done it, though, and it was just like a first kiss, the one that changes everything. Yes, I could get used to being married to him.

"Raphaela-what-on-earth-are-you-_doing_?" he seethed at me through a clenched jaw. So maybe I'd jumped on his back again and demanded that he carry me to the apparition point, referring to him as 'Lady Clover'. Well, it was a valid horse name, though he did not much care for it. I loved it though, so it was going to stay. The guests were clapping and my father was smiling reluctantly, clearly still miffed at my apparent snubbing of his accompanying-skills.

"To the reception, Lady Clover!" I cried out loudly, throwing my fist into the air. "I'm going to get squiffy and seduce someone!"

"You are not," Severus muttered, though he was smiling slightly. It was a good day to be me. We apparated to the reception, where waiters were poised with trays of champagne. The band appeared directly on the stage and began to play as soon as they were set up. Since they hadn't really had a chance to perform my slightly altered wedding march, they did so then, and _Talk Dirty to Me_ blared throughout the room. "I don't recall agreeing to this choice of musician," Severus said. His arms were folded and he looked uncomfortable at the centre of the crowd of guests.

"You said you didn't care who I hired as long as they didn't play the chicken dance," I said, shoving a flute of champagne into his hands and downing one in moments before taking another. "I happen to think that a Poison cover band is the epitome of class."

"You also think that pie covers all food groups," he said sullenly.

"It does!" I cried. "There's fruit, sugar, oils, dairy, and pastry."

"Pastry is not a food group."

"Prove it."

"Idiocy," he muttered, though he had almost finished the champagne and was smiling. "Sheer idiocy. I'm surprised you didn't get a wedding pie instead of a cake." He gestured towards the looming white monster that was sitting in pride of place on a table, and I winked at him.

"You think that's cake under the icing? That's four tiers of _cherry pie._"

"Charming," he said, looking at me like I'd gone mad.

"And you should take a closer look at the miniature bride and groom on top." I pulled him over to the cake table and pointed to the top of the cake, and he followed my lead and peered at the figurines. One was in a puffy white dress, smiling broadly and hugging the other one, which was a thin, white-faced, black-clad figure that had taken to scowling up at everyone. He seemed to switch between trying to throw her off and patting her on the shoulder, which made me smile.

"How realistic," he said dryly. "Are those… did you have _bat wings_ put on the miniature me?"

"I did," I said happily. I finished my champagne and swiped another from a passing waiter, replacing it with my empty glass. "'Cause you remind me of a gigantic bat."

"And why does the miniature you have bat wings?"

"Because I told the chef we were vampires. Look what he threw in!" I picked up a shiny bag from behind the cake and wiggled it around.

"Is that… Raphaela, is that blood?"

"Yes."

"Why did he give you that?"

"Because I might have implied that I was going to bite him if he didn't."

"What are we going to do with a bag of blood?"

"What _aren't_ we going to do with a bag of blood, more like," I giggled. "It has like, fifty ordinary household uses."

"Name one."

"If we were vampires, we could drink it."

"This," he said, taking another flute of champagne from a waiter. "This is what I have to live with for the next hundred years."

"And this is why you drink," I said, staring wistfully at the cake. "To forget the horror that is being married to me."

"Excellent ceremony," came a voice to my right. It was McGonagall. She had a knack for sneaking up on me. I hadn't even heard her approach, the sly woman. She was smiling approvingly at the cake figurines. "I must say, I was worried. But we all love a good mystery, and you both kept us guessing until the very end. Quite entertaining. But I suppose we all knew what was going to happen in the end. There was never really any doubt."

"We aim to please, Minerva," I said cheerfully, and she nodded and moved away. "See, Severus? It wasn't an explosive domestic, it was an exciting mystery show."

"Call it what you will, I'm still going to remember that as the worst wedding I've ever attended," he said, grimacing at me. "Either that, or the best. Any occasion that ends with us being married does impress a certain value upon itself."

"Ha, ha, you like me," I taunted, poking him in the arm. He shot me a glare. "Watch out, incoming parents at two o'clock." He span around and stared at my approaching parents. My mother looked teary and overjoyed; my father still looked irritated but pleased.

"Oh, this is so wonderful," my mother gushed, dabbing at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief.

"I agree," said my father, looking as though he were sizing Severus up. "How old are you, boy? Actually never mind, I don't want to know."

Severus seemed frozen, staring at my parents and not moving a muscle, but keeping his jaw tightly clenched. He probably couldn't have formed sentences even if he'd wanted to. "Now, Martin," my mother said. "What's really important is when we're going to see some grandchildren." Severus made an odd growling-squealing noise at the back of his throat, but remained frozen like a deer in the headlights.

"Sweet Merlin, Mum, do you _have_ to?" I said loudly, putting a hand to my forehead to show my frustration. "We've been _over_ this; I am _not_ subjecting myself to the horror of children!"

"Oh, pish posh," she said dismissively, waving a hand. "You're _married_ now, Raphaela. You don't have to put off children for the sake of your _body_. Who are you trying to attract anymore anyway?"

I was speechless, joining Severus in the realms of Paralyzed by Parents. My father turned to her, making a disapproving noise. "Carol, there's no need to be impatient with them. I'm sure they've got other things on their minds than insemination." I'd started to drink my champagne at the rate of knots to try and distance myself from this horror-filled conversation, but at my father's words I snorted half of it up my nose and had to cough quite a lot to get myself feeling like a human being again and not a Pain Machine.

"This conversation," I said, holding up a silencing hand, "is over. I can _not_ listen to you two talk about grandchildren and pregnancy and insemination. Come on, Severus." Looking immensely relieved to have an excuse to leave my absolutely batshit insane parents and their baby-centric agenda, Severus followed me towards a table, where we sat down. I put my forehead on the white linen tablecloth and sighed loudly, groaning slightly at the same time. "I am _so_ sorry you had to hear that."

"That's okay," I heard him say, though I could tell by his tone of voice that he wanted to kill himself as soon as possible. "I'm blocking it out."


	20. Fishies

**Chapter Twenty: Fishies**

The reception was amazing. Severus had flinched at all of the photographer's flashes, and so I figured we'd be seeing a lot of photos of him with squinty eyes, but I didn't care. It was just amazing. I'd had a lot of champagne, so it was ever so slightly blurry, but I remember the fantastic feelings. The giddy, girlish nervousness I'd felt when we'd had our first dance. The butterfly-stomach, light-headed feeling I got when he put his hand on mine on the knife to cut the pie-cake. The end of the reception approaching, and feeling tired and worn out, but still forcing Severus to dance with me just one last time. The way he'd leant against a wall, watching everyone else dance, and looked down at me as I put my arms around him and refused to let go. The stupid, ridiculously euphoric feeling I got just from looking at him and knowing that this man was going to be mine forever. It was so strange, I'd never expected the intensity of those feelings. I almost cried out of joy about seventeen times, but I held it in. I wasn't going to make a blubbering scene at my own wedding, not again, anyway. And sometimes I could tell, when I caught Severus looking at me sideways, I could see something in his eyes. Somehow I think I knew that he was feeling the exact same things as me, though he'd never admit it.

And now, it was all over, the wedding had passed and the guests had left the reception, and we had bid my parents goodbye. I'd changed into some more casual attire, since I was starting to feel a little silly in my puffy white dress, and Severus and I had apparated.

"And where are we, Raphaela?" he asked wearily, looking around. "I had been under the impression we were to remain in Britain."

"Yes, but Britain is cold and smelly and I don't like it," I giggled. I hadn't wanted to honeymoon in England, but for the sake of Keeping the Peace While Raphaela Has to Arrange a God Damned Wedding, I had told him that England was fine. Unfortunately, England was not fine at all, and so I had made a teeny tiny change to the travel arrangements. So I may not have told him about it, but damn it, marriage was about compromise, and Severus had to compromise and do everything I wanted.

We were standing on a pristine white beach, completely empty save for two young, pretty sunbathers. I felt a pang of irrational annoyance at them for being so pretty, before I realised that I was married, and it wasn't a competition anymore. I was _married_. I was somebody's wife. That had to mean something.

"If the events of today had not left me with a vague feeling of goodwill, I would throttle you," he said, glaring at me. "I do not think that this kind of setting is my cup of tea." He was squinting from the afternoon sun that was beating down on his head, and looked quite pink in the face.

"Yeah, but you're so full of champagne you'll agree to anything," I said, giggling more. "Come on, let's get to the reception desk before you fry out here. We can just spend the rest of today in the room, and tomorrow we'll get you out onto the beach."

"I will do no such thing," he said, allowing me to lead him towards the entrance hall of the bright white hotel. "The beach is not my usual habitat."

"Yeah, you're more of a dungeony type, I know," I said. "But it'll be fun. We can go swimming in that bright blue water. Doesn't it look appealing?"

He turned his head and cast an eye over the gorgeous, sparkling beach. "About as appealing as having my head removed by repeated bludgeoning to the neck with a bowling pin."

"There'll be fishies!" I whined as we approached the fancy-looking Muggle man behind the counter. "We'll be able to see the brightly coloured fishies! They'll be so pretty, and I'll be so disappointed if I don't get to see the fishies."

"Stop saying fishies."

"Fishies."

"May I… help you both?" The man behind the counter looked vaguely bored and slightly annoyed, as though we were taking up his valuable time by talking about fishies in front of him.

"Yes please, the name's Snape-Vialle." As I said it I realised how peculiar it sounded. Not just in terms of the two names together, but _my_ name with someone else's. Because I was _married_. I still couldn't get over the shock of it all. "I brought the luggage up yesterday, so you don't have to worry about getting one of those thingies, you know, the thingies that hotel people use to carry bags and stuff."

"Stop talking, Raphaela," Severus said sharply, but there was a vague smile on his face.

"I've got a better idea, how about _you_ stop talking," I retorted, poking my tongue out.

"I said three words, and _you_ have been acting like a blathering idiot all day."

"Ah, yes," the man said, casting a sidelong glance in our direction. "The Honeymoon Suite. Er… are you sure that's correct?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" I asked, furrowing my eyebrows. How peculiar.

"Oh, no reason, ma'am," he said, moving around the desk to walk us to the elevator. "You just… it's just that… usually our honeymooners are slightly less… wasp-like around each other. Meaning no offence, of course."

"No, we got married a couple of hours ago," I said cheerfully, as he pressed the button and the lift began to move. "Severus here is just a cranky old bat because I'm making him go out to the beach tomorrow."

"Well… congratulations?" He seemed moderately confused and concerned. I smiled at him.

"Thank you. I'm sure that once I get him into some rainbow swim trunks he'll be just peachy."

"Sweet Merlin," Severus muttered beside me. "It's quite possible I'll murder you as you sleep, Raphaela."

"The hotel would prefer it if you didn't, sir," the man said, looking even more worried. "Liability and all that. You understand."

"I'm so very disappointed," he said sullenly.

"I was just kidding," I giggled at him. "I got you black ones."

"Which I am not going to be wearing, because I am _not_ spending another second on that damned beach. And if you try to make me, I'll have to stun you and then spend an enjoyable day not being bothered."

"Tenth floor," the man said hurriedly, looking horrified. Severus and I exited the lift and I turned back towards the man, though Severus simply folded his arms and glared. "Honeymoon Suite. Er… enjoy your stay?"

"Thank you," I said cheerfully as the lift doors closed on the man and Severus and I were alone with our glares. "Now, Severus, let's not get too grumpy. I mean, look at this room! It's gorgeous! You can't be unhappy in a room like this."

"I beg to differ," he seethed, though he wasn't even bothering to look around. I decided that I would look around, grabbing him by the elbow and dragging him forcibly, which was quite difficult because he was a surprisingly strong man and I was a very small girl. Eventually he relented, but I punished him for being difficult by jumping on his back and making him carry me around the room. Surprisingly, he didn't object, but still scowled audibly when I called him 'Lady Clover' again. Oh yes, this was going to be a fabulous honeymoon, and there wasn't a damn thing Severus was going to do to ruin it for us.


	21. Beached

**Chapter Twenty-One: Beached**

I woke up the next morning feeling quite ordinary, before I remembered that _holy crap I'd just gotten married._ I then proceeded to jump about the room squealing loudly, waking Severus up and making him yell at me. Oh, well. My moment was good while it lasted. It seemed like bare moments before I was frolicking on the beach, unfortunately I had to frolic alone because while Severus had reluctantly agreed to come down with me, he had refused point-blank to frolic. Instead he was sitting in a relatively shady area in an all-black outfit, though I'd convinced him to ditch the robes and wear proper clothes, since it was a Muggle resort and all. It was a little lonely by myself in the sun, but I was so excited for being on the beach and I was so happy with my new bathing suit that I just _had _to jump around and make my feelings known. Waving to Severus, I turned and ran into the water, which was pleasantly tepid. A perfect water temperature, I thought as I swam about joyfully. I even got to see the brightly coloured fishies. I would have swum about for hours, but I was disrupted by a large mass that I accidentally face-planted into. It turned out to be a man who looked barely old enough to be out of school, but with an intense tan and blonde hair so bright it almost hurt my eyes to look at.

"I'm awfully sorry," I said, still smiling. The fishies had put me in a good mood. "I was looking at the fishies and I must have been distracted. I will make all attempts not to swim into you in future."

"That's totally fine," he said, flashing a too-white smile. It reflected the sun in my eyes and I had to squint to look at him. Everything about him was bright and pretty, and it was somewhat mesmerizing. "What's a pretty girl like you doing all alone here anyway?" He put his hand on my upper arm as he said this and I got the distinct impression that he may have been trying to hit on me.

"Oh, thanks for saying I'm pretty," I said clumsily, tripping over my words. "I'm not alone, though. I just got married. He's over there, actually." I turned around and pointed to Severus, who looked quite far away. Damn this water and its unending shallowness. I must have been at least fifty or a hundred metres out. All I could see was a black mass with a bright white patch at the top that I assumed must have been Severus' face. The man looked where I was pointing, and raised an eyebrow.

"He shouldn't have let you come out here all alone," he said, not taking his hand off my arm. It was starting to creep me out, actually. "Someone like you, I'd have thought he'd want to be with you all the time."

"Actually, he's more of a… well, beaches aren't really his thing…" I couldn't really think of the right words, and it showed. "What do you mean, someone like me? We don't even know each other. I… I think I'm going to go back to the beach now. Good-bye."

"I hope to see you around…?" he called, as I was wading slowly back towards the shore. The way he'd left his question hanging made it clear that he wanted to know my name, but he wasn't going to get it. I waved a hand in his direction and kept moving. What made him think that he could continue to hit on me after he _knew_ I was married? Holy crap, I was married. That still hadn't sunk in. Despite the distance I'd gone from the shore, it took me quite a short time to get back to Severus. I smiled as I approached him and flicked seawater at him playfully. He didn't look very amused, though.

"Who's your friend?" he asked, clearly making an attempt to appear nonchalant.

"No idea. I think he might have been hitting on me. It was weird."

"That's not weird. That's understandable." Well, now he was smiling. He looked moderately freakish with a smile on his face, so I just sat down next to him and let the water from my hair and body drip down onto the sand. "He's staring."

"Is he?" I turned to look, and it did indeed appear as though the man was angling his face in our direction, though he was very far away and I couldn't really tell. "Don't worry about him. He's just some guy."

"And what am I?" he asked, brow furrowed in pensive irritation. What kind of a question was that? The stupid-head.

"You're an idiot. I _love_ you." I flicked more water at him and he frowned at me. "You know that."

"Quite. I believe that I've had quite enough of this beach," he said, standing up and brushing the sand off himself.

"But we just got here. It's not even lunchtime yet."

"You stay here, look at the… the fishies. I'll go and order something from room service and we can have lunch when you return to the room."

"Okay," I muttered sullenly. "But we're going to go down to the beachfront bar tonight, and we're going to get absolutely squiffy on delicious fruity beverages, okay?"

"As you wish," he said, though he'd already turned and started walking back towards the hotel. Well, what a complete buzzkill. I watched him leaving until he'd entered the hotel lobby and was no longer visible, then I moved to where it was sunny and lay down on my back, arms behind my head as a limb pillow. The sun was very pleasant on my still-wet skin, but I had to close my eyes because I'd forgotten to bring down my sunglasses. It didn't seem to matter though, as the sun on me felt like a warm blanket, and everything seemed absolutely lovely. That was, until the sun was blocked by something blonde, tan and ridiculously muscular. Urgh, that guy was back.

"Your husband doesn't seem too attentive," he said, looking down at me with a half-smile on his face. "I'm beginning to wonder if you're even married. Someone like him, someone like you, it doesn't seem right."

"You're in my sun," I said, gritting my teeth. He continued to half-smile down at me, which was quite irritating. I wished he'd go away and bother someone else.

"I'll leave you to your sun if you'll come for a swim," he said, gesturing towards the sparkling blue water.

"Married!" I said, annoyed. "Totally, completely, utterly married. And I _love_ him. So go away."

"Sure doesn't seem like it," he said, though he complied with my request and left me alone. Well, that was good. And I didn't even _care_ what some over-tanned, stupidly good-looking man thought of my marriage to Severus. We loved each other good and proper, and that was good enough for the both of us. It didn't matter what other people thought. Suddenly the beach seemed a wholly unappetizing place to be, and so cursing that stupid stranger, I stood up and stormed back towards the hotel. I nodded curtly to the man behind the desk as I tracked sand into the lobby, though I noticed that he looked horrified at the mess I was making. I didn't care, though. I just wanted to go up into the room and see Severus, I didn't care if we stayed holed up in there for the rest of the honeymoon. After what seemed like an age, the elevator stopped at our room, and I got out.

"Severus?" I called, but received no answer. How odd. He wasn't in the bathroom, or the bedroom. I went out onto the deck overlooking the beach and saw the hotel's notepad, flapping slightly in the breeze. The blue hotel pen was lying on top of the notepad, and I moved forward curiously to see what was written.

_Raphaela,_

_It is difficult to articulate why I am doing this. Before I write anything further, I want you to know that I love you more than I ever thought possible, far beyond what I can say. That is why I am doing this. It is one of the most difficult things I have had to do, but it is to ensure the best for you. I am unsure of how to assemble the words to make it sound less terrible, so I will put it bluntly. By the time you read this I will have gone back to Britain. I must ask that you not seek me out. I implore you, remain at the hotel and then return to Hogwarts and become sole Potions Master. I will have removed all remnants of myself from the school by the time you return. I do this for your benefit, Raphaela. I am not the right man for you, and we are both aware of this fact. We should not carry on with this charade. I cannot carry on when I know that you and I cannot remain together. I know that you will find a man more suitable than I, and I wish you both the greatest of happiness._

_Do not forget that I will love you always, Raphaela, until time itself ceases to be._

_S._

Oh, bloody hell.

* * *

A/N: Sorry for not updating in a while, holiday season and all. Anyway, this is the second-from-last chapter, isn't that exciting? I'm excited, anyway. The next chapter is quite spiffy, in my opinion, so it would do you good to give it a read once it's up. :)


	22. Scorned

A/N: Here we go with the final chapter, get excited or something. Super thanks to everyone for liking it.

**Chapter Twenty-Two: Scorned**

Well. There that was. Severus had gone, he'd left me at the hotel, and I was alone, once again. A breeze picked up where I was standing on the balcony, frozen, and it ruffled my still-damp hair. But I couldn't move. I felt as paralyzed as I had in the staff room, when I thought that he was dead. He'd left me. And despite what he'd written in his stupidly eloquent letter, he couldn't possibly have loved me as much as he said he did. If he had, he wouldn't have left. I didn't care what stupid reasons he gave for leaving me, whether it was for my own good or not. If he'd loved me, he wouldn't have left. It was as simple as that. So logically, he couldn't possibly have loved me. That realization hit me like a hippogriff in a thunderstorm and I was physically knocked back, broken from my paralytic state to stagger about the hotel room, taking in great breaths to stop myself choking on my own grief. Eventually I hit the side of the bed we'd shared the previous night, our first night as a married couple, and I fell down upon it, nearly screaming at the prospect of having to live without Severus. I was lying on my back, getting sand in the sheets, staring up at the pure white ceiling with a look of abject horror on my face. I clutched my face with my hands and screwed my eyes shut, hoping against hope that this was all just a horrible nightmare and I'd wake up next to Severus, and I could throw my arms around him and tell him about the awful dream I'd been having. And of course he'd tell me that I was being stupid, that he'd _never_… oh, Merlin. He did. He'd actually done it. He'd left me. It was no dream, and I couldn't wake up. This was my life, this was real, this was my life without Severus. It wasn't getting off to a particularly good start.

I couldn't say how long I remained lying on the bed, hands on my face. Eventually I must have gone to sleep, though, because I had the most wonderful dream. Severus was with me. I'd leapt at him and hugged him tightly, telling him that I'd missed him, and begged him not to leave me again. Pathetic, really. The worst part was waking up and realizing that it wasn't real. It was dark outside. I stood up and pulled on a pair of jeans that were lying on the ground, over the lower part of my new, sand-covered bikini. I took one last look around the room and turned on the spot, apparating to Hogsmeade so that I could go up to Hogwarts. I couldn't say what my goal was, or why I was even going there. I was numb all over, and I seemed to have misplaced the part of my brain responsible for rational thought. I barely noticed the sticks and stones poking onto the soles of my bare feet, tearing the skin and embedding themselves in my flesh. It was freezing cold outside the castle, but the fact that I was only wearing my bathing suit and a pair of jeans didn't seem to register in my head as my arms hung limply by my sides, my face gormless as I moved zombie-like towards the castle. The warm air inside Hogwarts was welcome, though I wasn't really in a mood to care if I was in Africa or Antarctica as far as temperatures went. I was going to go down to the dungeons, and see Severus, and… I really didn't know what I'd do after that. I just needed to see him. I didn't work properly without him.

The dungeons were deserted. He was true to his word. All evidence that he'd ever been there was gone. There were only my things left in the room we'd once shared. I sat down on the cold stone floor and stared at the bedpost. _Why_ hadn't he loved me? Had I done something wrong? Could I have done something… anything differently, to make him stay? I must have done something, but for the life of me I couldn't think of what it was. Maybe it was that I'd forced him to go down to the beach with me. But that wasn't _that_ horrible, was it? I just… I just wanted to see the fishies… and I wanted him to be with me. I just wanted him with me. I couldn't understand what I'd done to warrant his departure. I started to pick the splinters and tiny rocks from the soles of my feet, barely feeling their pain. Well, at least there was that upside to my complete and utter destruction. It made me so numb that I couldn't feel anything anymore.

I hated that he wasn't with me. I hated that he hadn't loved me enough to stay. I hated that he'd gone through with the whole stupid wedding when he _knew_ that he didn't really love me at all… well, I had kind of forced him to marry me, after he'd had his doubts. Was that why he'd left? He… he'd never really wanted to marry me at all? Oh, Merlin, I couldn't think about the wedding anymore. I was so happy at the reception… and I'd thought he was too…

"I'm sorry, Raphaela." McGonagall's voice came to me from somewhere behind me, but I didn't turn around. I stared into the sole of my foot, searching for any debris I had missed. "He's been and gone. I tried to talk to him, but he seemed determined to leave." I heard footsteps behind me and a hand came down on my shoulder, squeezing it in a reassuring sort of way. "I'm sorry."

"I need to…" I trailed off, not sure where that sentence had been heading. I needed something. What did I need? I just... I didn't know. There was a gnawing feeling deep inside of me, like there was something that I had to do. "Give me his address."

"I don't think it will help, Raphaela. He was very determined."

I turned around and shot my most blazing glare at McGonagall, one I had learned directly from Severus. She looked taken aback, and stood up straight, taking her hand off my shoulder in the process. "Minerva," I growled quietly. "I'm not going to ask you again."

And that was how I found my way to Spinner's End, walking towards the address that McGonagall had reluctantly given me. I was furious. I was angry beyond words. How could he have done this to me? When all I'd done was love him. He'd left me for no reason, no reason at all, and I was fit to strangle the stupid dunderhead. I reached the house and pounded on the door. It swung open.

"_Don't you listen to a damned thing I tell you?_" For a moment I thought there was someone else in the house, but then I realised that the shouting I heard was directed at me. I entered the house and shut the door behind me, and saw Severus, back in his robes, facing away from me and leaning against a bookshelf. "I told you _not_ to look for me, and what do you do?"

"I look for you," I said defiantly. All I wanted to do was to run over and throw my arms around him, never to let go, but I stood my ground. "Because I love you. Because I thought you loved me, but now I see that I was just being foolish."

"Then why have you come, if that's what you think?" he asked, sounding slightly deflated.

"I… I don't know." I had outright accused him of not loving me and he hadn't denied it. I was determined, though, I wasn't going to collapse into a sobbing mess on his floor and make him think I was even more pathetic. "Why did you stay with me so long if you didn't… if you never…" I couldn't make the words come out. I tried, but they kept on getting caught in my throat and I had to keep wiping the tears off my face so that he wouldn't see me crying.

"Raphaela…" he turned and saw me trying vainly to stop myself from crying, and so I turned away from him. "Don't… I don't want to see you like that…"

"_Then why did you leave?!_" I spun back and faced him, trying to glare at him but probably looking deranged. "Why did you… I don't…" I stopped trying to stem the flow of tears and simply put my hands over my face, shaking slightly as I tried not to sob too loudly. I felt his arms rest hesitantly around my shoulders but I turned around and shoved him in the chest as hard as I could. He staggered back a few paces but kept his ground. So, maybe I wasn't very strong. But I was angry.

"I left because I love -"

"Don't you _dare_ try to tell me that you love me now," I spat, still glaring up at him. "You would never have left if you'd loved me."

"I thought I was doing the right thing for you."

"_Does it look like you've done the right thing for me?_"

"I didn't want it to be like this," he said, moving to the couch by a bookshelf and sitting down on it. He motioned for me to sit down too, but I remained standing. I didn't feel up to moving. "I… I had hoped that you would do as I told you and found someone else… someone better…"

"Don't be stupid," I said, letting out a small, gasping laugh. "I never do what you tell me."

"I know," he smiled wryly up at me, though it vanished when I didn't return it.

"I don't want anybody else. How many times do I have to say that before you'll believe it? _I love you_. I will always love you. That means forever. I don't want anyone else. Only you."

He looked up at me, staring piercingly. "And I would never consider anyone but you." He motioned for me to sit down again, and this time I accepted.

"What happens now, then?" He put one arm about my shoulders and this time I didn't throw him off, but rested my head on his shoulder. "What are we going to do?" For once, Severus seemed lost for words. "We _are_ married."

"It will remain so," he said. "No matter what you believe, I have always loved you. And I will never stop. I do believe that what happened at the hotel was a most grievous mistake."

"Of course it was," I said irritably. "Every time I let you out of my sight, you're convincing yourself that you're not good enough. Am I going to have to be everywhere you are?"

"I can see no flaw in that suggestion," Severus muttered, looking down at me with a peculiar half-smile on his face. "As it stands, whenever I let _you_ out of _my_ sight, men are swarming about for you."

"That's a bit of an exaggeration," I said huffily. "Well then, it appears that the solution is obvious."

"I quite agree," he muttered. I looked up at him and smiled at the glimmer of… something that I saw in his usually-blank eyes. I had Severus back, and he was mine forever. Everything was wonderful. "I'll be anywhere you are."

* * *

A/N: Ta-da! The end! I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I would really love to do another Raphaela story, but I'm all out of ideas for them. Le sigh. She's had a good run, anyway. And I hope you all catch the little reference at the end of this story. If you don't, you may want to read the last chapter of the original Internal, Infernal. Or not. I mean, I won't cry if you don't. But I might. And do you really want that on your conscience?


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